Mesenchymal Stem Cells: A Helping Hand in Liver Transplants

The role of stem cells in liver transplants

When someone receives a liver transplant, it’s a life-saving procedure—but it also comes with risks. The immune system may reject the new organ, patients can develop infections or bile duct complications, and the strong medications used to suppress the immune system often create their own side effects.

A recent review in Stem Cell Research & Therapy examined how mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are being tested as a way to improve outcomes in liver transplantation.

What the Review Reveals

1. Calming the Immune System

MSCs can regulate immune responses, helping the body accept a transplanted organ. The review described cases where patients experiencing rejection after a transplant saw improvement once MSCs were introduced. In some situations, rejection that had not responded to traditional immune-suppressing drugs began to resolve after MSC therapy

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2. Reducing Complications

• Bile duct issues: Patients who received multiple doses of MSCs after transplantation had fewer bile duct complications and higher one-year survival rates.

• Infections: In several studies, MSC-treated groups had lower rates of serious infections, including septic shock and lung infections, compared to those who did not receive MSCs.

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3. Supporting Healing and Organ Health

MSCs don’t just calm the immune system; they also promote repair. The review highlighted research where MSCs were combined with advanced perfusion techniques to preserve donated livers. These studies showed that MSCs helped maintain organ health, even in livers from higher-risk donors.

4. How MSCs Work

MSCs act in multiple ways. They interact directly with immune cells like T-cells and macrophages to quiet harmful reactions, and they release healing factors that reduce inflammation and support tissue repair. This dual role—immune regulation and regeneration—is what makes them such a powerful candidate for transplant medicine.

What This Means for You

While the clinical studies reviewed used MSCs from bone marrow or umbilical cord, all MSCs—including those from dental pulp—share these same fundamental properties. This means that stem cells stored from baby or wisdom teeth may also one day help in transplant situations.

For example:

• If a child who had their dental pulp stem cells stored later required a liver transplant, those cells could potentially be used to reduce the risk of rejection, lowering their dependence on heavy immune-suppressing drugs.

• In cases where a donor organ is considered “marginal” or at higher risk of failure, dental MSCs could be applied to help stabilize and repair the liver before or during transplant, making more organs usable.

• If post-surgical complications like bile duct injury or infections arose, stored dental MSCs could provide an additional therapy to reduce inflammation and speed recovery.

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In short, while dental pulp stem cells have not yet been studied directly in liver transplantation, the shared biology of MSCs strongly suggests they may offer similar protective and healing effects in the future.

Read the full article here: https://stemcellres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13287-024-03943-6