The human hepatic cell line HepaRG as a possible cell source for the generation of humanized liver TK-NOG mice

1. Humanized-liver mice, in which the liver has been repopulated with human hepatocytes, have been used to study aspects of human liver physiology such as drug metabolism, toxicology and hepatitis infection. However, the procurement of human hepatocytes is a major problem in producing humanized-liver mice because of the finite nature of the patient-derived resource. 2. In order to overcome this limitation, the human hepatic cell line HepaRG® were evaluated as promising donor cells for liver reconstitution in the TK-NOG mouse model. 3. We demonstrate that, in vivo, transplanted confluent culture or differentiated HepaRG® cells proliferated and differentiated toward both hepatocyte-like and biliary-like cells within the recipient liver. In contrast, proliferative HepaRG® cells could engraft TK-NOG mouse liver but could differentiate only toward biliary-like cells. The differentiation to hepatocyte-like cells was characterized by the detection of human albumin in the recipient mouse serum and was confirmed by immunohistochemical staining for human leukocyte antigen, human albumin, cytochrome P450 3A4, and multidrug resistance-associated protein 2. Biliary-like cells were characterized by positive staining for cytokeratin-19. 4. These results indicated that the differentiated HepaRG® cells are a possible cell source for generating humanized-liver mice, which are a useful model for in vivo studies of liver physiology.