Application of stem cells in the precise diagnosis and treatment of liver diseases

doi:10.3748/wjg.v31.i46.114415

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World Journal of Gastroenterology

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1007-9327

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Baishideng Publishing Group Inc, 7041 Koll Center Parkway, Suite 160, Pleasanton, CA 94566, USA

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World J Gastroenterol. Dec 14, 2025; 31(46): 114415
Published online Dec 14, 2025. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v31.i46.114415

Application of stem cells in the precise diagnosis and treatment of liver diseases

Yuan-Xin Wang, Ya-Nian Ren, Shan-Shan Zhang, Shan Sun, Ming-Yi Xu, Teng Wei, Lei-Sheng Zhang

Yuan-Xin Wang, Shan-Shan Zhang, Lei-Sheng Zhang, Shandong Provincial Key Medical and Health Laboratory of Blood Ecology and Biointelligence, Jinan Key Laboratory of Medical Cell Bioengineering, Science and Technology Innovation Center, The Fourth People’s Hospital of Jinan Affiliated to Shandong Second Medical University, Jinan 250031, Shandong Province, China

Ya-Nian Ren, Lei-Sheng Zhang, College of Qingdao Medical, Qingdao University, Qingdao 266073, Shandong Province, China

Shan Sun, Department of Plastic Surgery, Jinan Huaiyin People’s Hospital, Jinan 250021, Shandong Province, China

Ming-Yi Xu, Lei-Sheng Zhang, College of Life Science and Technology, Shandong Second Medical University, Weifang 261053, Shandong Province, China

Teng Wei, School of Basic Medicine, Gannan Medical University, Ganzhou 341000, Jiangxi Province, China

Co-first authors: Yuan-Xin Wang and Ya-Nian Ren.

Co-corresponding authors: Teng Wei and Lei-Sheng Zhang.

Author contributions: Wang YX and Ren YN contributed equally to this work as co-first authors; Zhang SS, Sun S, and Xu MY conducted the data analyses and interpretation, manuscript writing, and revision; Wei T and Zhang LS conceived and designed the study, gave final approval of the manuscript, and made equal contributions as co-corresponding authors; all authors have read and approved the publication of the manuscript.

Supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China, No. 82260031 and No. 82460027; Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province, No. ZR2025MS1382; Medical and Health Technology Project of Shandong Province, No. 202402050122; Taishan Scholar Special Funding, No. tsqnz20240858; Clinical Medical Science and Technology Innovation Program of Jinan Science and Technology Bureau, No. 202430055; Natural Science Foundation of Jiangxi Province, No. 20252BAC210008; Science and Technology Development Plan of Jinan Municipal Health Commission, No. 2024301008 and No. 2025202005; and The Senior Medical and Healthcare Talent Visiting Program of Shandong Province, No. 202403001.

Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors report no relevant conflicts of interest for this article.

Open Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/

Corresponding author: Lei-Sheng Zhang, PhD, Director, Professor, Senior Researcher, Shandong Provincial Key Medical and Health Laboratory of Blood Ecology and Biointelligence, Jinan Key Laboratory of Medical Cell Bioengineering, Science and Technology Innovation Center, The Fourth People’s Hospital of Jinan Affiliated to Shandong Second Medical University, No. 50 Shifan Road, Tianqiao District, Jinan 250031, Shandong Province, China. leisheng_zhang@163.com

Received: September 18, 2025
Revised: October 14, 2025
Accepted: October 29, 2025
Published online: December 14, 2025
Processing time: 83 Days and 1.7 Hours

Abstract

Liver diseases caused by diverse inflammation or cancer have serious damaged people’s physical and mental health and become a heavy social burden. Stem cells possess unique properties of self-renewal and multi-directional differentiation, which are widely used for disease remodeling and regenerative medicine. Of them, human induced pluripotent stem cell-based liver organoids with self-organization of sinusoidal vessels have been reported for diverse liver cancer remodeling and drug sensitivity test, which provide unique platforms to dissect functional consequences of diverse levels of heteroplasmy of target gene mutation in liver cancers. Meanwhile, mesenchymal stem/stromal cells have been adopted for clinical treatment research on various liver diseases, including acute liver injury, decompensated liver cirrhosis, hepatic fibrosis and acute-on-chronic liver failure. In this review article, we mainly focus on the state-of-the-art literatures upon stem cell-based disease modeling and cell therapy for multifarious liver diseases from the view of basic research and clinical progress, which will provide references for the development of stem cell-based regenerative medicine in the precise diagnosis and treatment of liver diseases.

Keywords: Stem cells; Liver diseases; Organoids; Cell therapy; Human induced pluripotent stem cells; Mesenchymal stem/stromal cells

Core Tip: Liver diseases of multitudinous types have caused great burden to public health and social economics. In this review article, we outline the fundamental and clinical progress of stem cell-based strategies for liver disease diagnosis and intervention, and in particular, the human induced pluripotent stem cells-based organoids for disease modeling and mesenchymal stem/stromal cells-based regimens for therapeutic purposes. Overall, our review will provide new references for facilitating the development of stem cell-based precision medicine for liver diseases.