Human hepatocyte metaplasia in injured humanized mouse livers

The goal of this experiment was to test whether human hepatocytes could give rise to biliary-like progenitor cells in an in vivo context. Here Fah-/- Il2ry-/- Rag2-/-NOD mouse livers were humanized with human hepatocytes. Only hepatocytes engraft in the Fah-/- mouse at detectable levels in this model. Then animals were given chronic liver injury with 0.1% ddc. After injury we measured human-specific transcripts to determine whether the phenotype of the human cells had changed. Specifically, we evaluated the relative levels of human biliary duct markers such as Spp1, Sox9, Krt7, etc. and hepatocyte markers such as Alb, Ttr, Fah, etc. Overall design: 3 DDC treated chimeras and 6 untreated chimeras are included. Additional controls include a normal human liver biopsy, FACS sorted primary intrahepatic human bile duct cells, mouse hepatocytes, and mouse intrahepatic biliary cells in ddc treated animal.