Van Pham Phuc. Liver, Lung and Heart Regeneration

Springer, 2017. - 220 p. - ISBN: 978-3-319-46692-7The liver, lung and heart are major internal organs that control almost all biochemical physiology activities in the human body. The liver has a broad range of physiological functions such as detoxification, protein synthesis and biochemical production. The lung plays the respiratory function that extracts oxygen from the atmosphere and transfers it into the bloodstream to release carbon dioxide from the bloodstream into the atmosphere. And the heart is a pump that circulates blood through the blood vessels to all tissues. With these functions, the liver, lung and heart control some organ systems including the circulatory system, respiratory system, digestive system, urinary system, etc. Therefore, any diseases that relate to these organs can cause extreme health conditions.
There are two main groups of diseases related to these organs: infectious diseases and degenerative diseases (failure). Although there are different symptoms, they result from the significant loss of functional tissue cells. The regeneration of these functional tissue cells is considered a promising therapy to treat these conditions.
In recent years, stem cell therapies for liver, lung and heart regeneration are moved to the clinic with exciting results. Although there are some kinds of stem cells, including both pluripotent stem cells (induced pluripotent stem cells, embryonic stem cells) and adult stem cells used in the preclinical trials (in animals), a majority of clinical applications used mesenchymal stem cells — a kind of adult stem cells. Mesenchymal stem cells are used with two strategies including immune modulation and cell replacement. Indeed, some studies showed that mesenchymal stem cells could inhibit the inflammation in liver cirrhosis or are differentiated into the functional cells to replace the dead cells in ischemic heart disease.
This volume of “Stem Cells in Clinical Applications” book series with title Liver, Lung and Heart Regeneration aims to provide updated invaluable resource for advanced undergraduate students, graduate students, researchers and clinicians in stem cell applications for liver, lung and heart regeneration.
The book with 11 chapters covers almost the present applications of stem cells in liver, lung and heart regeneration. Chapters 1–4 discuss about liver regeneration. As the most popular liver disease, liver cirrhosis was treated by stem cell transplantation that is presented in Chaps. 2 and 3. And the mechanism of stem cell therapy for liver cirrhosis treatment also is suggested in Chap. 4. Chapters 5–7 discuss about applications of stem cells in lung regeneration. Both airway and lung regeneration are stated in Chaps. 5–7, respectively. And Chaps. 8–11 discuss about stem cell therapy and tissue engineering for heart regeneration.
We are indebted to our authors who graciously accepted their assignments and who have infused the text with their energetic contributions. We are incredibly thankful to the staff of Springer Science+Business Media who published this book.