LIVER REGENERATION: SUMMARY OF INVOLVED CELL TYPES

The liver has unique capacity to regulate its growth and mass. Healing process in the liver is characterized by the proliferation of all existing cell lines within the liver, including hepatocytes, hepatic progenitor cells, non parenchymal epithelial progenitors and small heptocyte like cells. Normally the liver exhibits a very low level of cell turnover, but when an abnormal hepatocyte loss occurs, a rapid regenerative response is elicited from all of these cell types in the liver. In this article, we review broadly the natural repair of the liver in response to injury.