Leveraging interacting signaling pathways to robustly improve the quality and yield of human pluripotent stem cell-derived hepatoblasts and hepatocytes

This study describes a robust and scalable protocol for pluripotent stem cell (PSC) differentiation into high-quality bipotent hepatoblasts and hepatocyte-like cells (HLCs), with Biolaminin 521 (laminin-521) as the cell culture matrix. The protocol resulted in cells that had a better resemblance to primary human hepatocytes than protocols described previously, showing a good potential to use them as an alternative to primary cells for in vitro modeling. PSC-derived hepatoblasts were able to mature into hepatocytes and bile ducts within syngeneic liver organoids.