Primary hepatocyte cultures for liver disease modeling

Hypotonic Swelling Method for the Isolation of Pure Mitochondria From Primary Human Skeletal Myoblasts for Proteomic Studies

Mitochondria play a fundamental role in energy metabolism, particularly in high-energy-demand tissues such as skeletal muscle. Understanding the proteomic composition of mitochondria in these cells is crucial for elucidating the mechanisms underlying muscle physiology and pathology. However, effective isolation of mitochondria from primary human skeletal muscle cells has been challenging due to the complex cellular architecture and the propensity for contamination with other organelles. Here, we compared four different methods to isolate mitochondria from primary human skeletal myoblasts regarding total protein yield, mitochondrial enrichment capacity and purity of the isolated fraction. We presented a modified method that combines differential centrifugation with a hypotonic swelling step and a subsequent purification process to minimise cellular contamination. We validated our method by demonstrating its ability to obtain highly pure mitochondrial fractions, as confirmed by Western Blot with mitochondrial, cytosolic and nuclear markers. We demonstrated that proteomic analysis can be performed with isolated mitochondria. Our approach provides a valuable tool for investigating mitochondrial dynamics, biogenesis and function in the context of skeletal muscle biology in health and disease. This methodological advancement opens new avenues for mitochondrial research and its implications in myopathies, sarcopenia, cachexia and metabolic disorders.

Probing Liver Injuries Induced by Thioacetamide in Human In Vitro Pooled Hepatocyte Experiments

Animal studies are typically utilized to understand the complex mechanisms associated with toxicant-induced hepatotoxicity. Among the alternative approaches to animal studies, in vitro pooled human hepatocytes have the potential to capture population variability. Here, we examined the effect of the hepatotoxicant thioacetamide on pooled human hepatocytes, divided into five lots, obtained from forty diverse donors. For 24 h, pooled human hepatocytes were exposed to vehicle, 1.33 mM (low dose), and 12 mM (high dose) thioacetamide, followed by RNA-seq analysis. We assessed gene expression variability using heat maps, correlation plots, and statistical variance. We used KEGG pathways and co-expression modules to identify underlying physiological processes/pathways. The co-expression module analysis showed that the majority of the lots exhibited activation for the bile duct proliferation module. Despite lot-to-lot variability, we identified a set of common differentially expressed genes across the lots with similarities in their response to amino acid, lipid, and carbohydrate metabolism. We also examined efflux transporters and found larger lot-to-lot variability in their expression patterns, indicating a potential for alteration in toxicant bioavailability within the cells, which could in turn affect the gene expression patterns between the lots. Overall, our analysis highlights the challenges in using pooled hepatocytes to understand mechanisms of toxicity.

Recent Advances on Cell Culture Platforms for In Vitro Drug Screening and Cell Therapies: From Conventional to Microfluidic Strategies

The clinical translations of drugs and nanomedicines depend on coherent pharmaceutical research based on biologically accurate screening approaches. Since establishing the 2D in vitro cell culture method, the scientific community has improved cell-based drug screening assays and models. Those advances result in more informative biochemical assays and the development of 3D multicellular models to describe the biological complexity better and enhance the simulation of the in vivo microenvironment. Despite the overall dominance of conventional 2D and 3D cell macroscopic culture methods, they present physicochemical and operational challenges that impair the scale-up of drug screening by not allowing a high parallelization, multidrug combination, and high-throughput screening. Their combination and complementarity with microfluidic platforms enable the development of microfluidics-based cell culture platforms with unequivocal advantages in drug screening and cell therapies. Thus, this review presents an updated and consolidated view of cell culture miniaturization's physical, chemical, and operational considerations in the pharmaceutical research scenario. It clarifies advances in the field using gradient-based microfluidics, droplet-based microfluidics, printed-based microfluidics, digital-based microfluidics, SlipChip, and paper-based microfluidics. Finally, it presents a comparative analysis of the performance of cell-based methods in life research and development to achieve increased precision in the drug screening process.

The native liver as inspiration to create superior in vitro hepatic models

Drug induced liver injury (DILI) is one of the major reasons of drug withdrawal during the different phases of drug development. The later in the drug development a drug is discovered to be toxic, the higher the economical as well as the ethical impact will be. In vitro models for early detection of drug liver toxicity are under constant development, however to date a superior model of the liver is still lacking. Ideally, a highly reliable model should be established to maintain the different hepatic cell functionalities to the greatest extent possible, during a period of time long enough to allow for tracking of the toxicity of compounds. In the case of DILI, toxicity can appear even after months of exposure. To reach this goal, an in vitro model should be developed that mimics the in vivo liver environment, function and response to external stimuli. The different approaches for the development of liver models currently used in the field of tissue engineering will be described in this review. Combining different technologies, leading to optimal materials, cells and 3D-constructs will ultimately lead to an ideal superior model that fully recapitulates the liver.

Advancements in MAFLD Modeling with Human Cell and Organoid Models

Metabolic (dysfunction) associated fatty liver disease (MAFLD) is one of the most prevalent liver diseases and has no approved therapeutics. The high failure rates witnessed in late-phase MAFLD drug trials reflect the complexity of the disease, and how the disease develops and progresses remains to be fully understood. In vitro, human disease models play a pivotal role in mechanistic studies to unravel novel disease drivers and in drug testing studies to evaluate human-specific responses. This review focuses on MAFLD disease modeling using human cell and organoid models. The spectrum of patient-derived primary cells and immortalized cell lines employed to model various liver parenchymal and non-parenchymal cell types essential for MAFLD development and progression is discussed. Diverse forms of cell culture platforms utilized to recapitulate tissue-level pathophysiology in different stages of the disease are also reviewed.

Mitochondria as the Target of Hepatotoxicity and Drug-Induced Liver Injury: Molecular Mechanisms and Detection Methods

One of the major mechanisms of drug-induced liver injury includes mitochondrial perturbation and dysfunction. This is not a surprise, given that mitochondria are essential organelles in most cells, which are responsible for energy homeostasis and the regulation of cellular metabolism. Drug-induced mitochondrial dysfunction can be influenced by various factors and conditions, such as genetic predisposition, the presence of metabolic disorders and obesity, viral infections, as well as drugs. Despite the fact that many methods have been developed for studying mitochondrial function, there is still a need for advanced and integrative models and approaches more closely resembling liver physiology, which would take into account predisposing factors. This could reduce the costs of drug development by the early prediction of potential mitochondrial toxicity during pre-clinical tests and, especially, prevent serious complications observed in clinical settings.

Hepatoprotective Activity of Pirdot Leaves (Saurauia vulcani Korth) Ethanol Extract in Laboratory Rats (Rattus norvegicus) and Characterization of Bioactive Compounds Using a Molecular Docking Approach

AIM: The hepatoprotective activities of  bioactive compounds Pirdot were investigated in vivo and in silico. METHODS: In this study, the completely randomized design non-factorial was experimentally to assess the value of SGPT and SGOT and twenty four adult male rats were divided into four groups : group G0, control group; group G1, a treated group received 0.1 ml sheep red blood cell; group G2, a treated group received 500 mg ethanol extract Pirdot; group G3, a group treated received 500 mg ethanol extract Pirdot and 0,1 ml sheep red blood cell. On thirty one days of treatment, the blood of all rats group were taken to value SGPT and SGOT using DiaLab kit. Furthermore, the molecular docking study was done to analyse molecular interaction that COX-2 and  TNF-α were the primary target protein of bioactive compounds of Pirdot associated with hepatoprotective activities. In addition, it tends to be the target of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs such as Ibuprofen. RESULTS: The results show SGOT and SGPT value significantly [p<0.05] decreased on Group G2 and G3. Moreover, the bioactive compounds of Pirdot, such as Pomolic acid and Ursolic acid tend to be the potential compound on liver protection. Moreover, Pomolic acid has a good binding affinity -14.6 kcal mol-1 with COX-2 Protein and the binding affinity of cis-3-O-p-hydroxycinnamoyl Ursolic acid was -15.1 kcal mol-1 associated with TNF-α Protein. CONLUSION:  Pirdot Leaves (Saurauia vulcani Korth.)  Ethanol Extract showed Hepatoprotective activity in rats (Rattus norvegicus). Molecular docking approach showed that pomolic acid has a good binding affinity with COX-2 Protein and TNF-α Protein.