Liver Regeneration

Understanding the mechanisms involved in liver regeneration is of crucial importance for clinical medicine, not only regarding carcinogenesis and diabetes treatment, but also for the use of stem cells for cell therapy and liver surgery. This graduate-level text provides an overview of the current state of knowledge of the molecular mechanisms of liver regeneration. Hepatic stem cells are introduced and the important players involved in regeneration such as oval cells, bone marrow and stellate cells are reviewed. The cell signaling pathways that initiate liver regeneration and regulate the switch between proliferation and apoptosis are presented and the role of liver stem cells in tumorigenesis is discussed. The book also treats the epigenetic regulation of liver stem cells and the roles of inflammation and angiogenesis in liver regeneration. This compact overview of the fascinating regenerative capacity of the liver will be of interest to graduate students and post-docs in molecular biology, biochemistry and medicine.

Dieter Häussinger, Heinrich Heine University, Düsseldorf, Germany.