Abstract
Hepatocyte transplantation provides an alternative cellular therapy to orthotopic liver transplantation for the treatment of fulminant hepatic failure and hereditary liver disease. Unfortunately there is a serious limitation to the treatment of liver diseases by both liver and hepatocyte transplantation, namely the shortage of organ donors. Therefore, to overcome the problem of organ shortage, additional sources of hepatocytes must be found. Alternative sources of hepatocytes for transplantation have been proposed and these include immortalized cells, stem cells (both embryonic and adult) and differentiated cell types from non-hepatic sources (e.g. the pancreas). The aim of this review is to summarize current knowledge of embryonic and adult stem cell differentiation towards the hepatic phenotype and to examine sources of hepatocytes from developmentally related tissues (e.g. the pancreas).