Building a Liver From Stem Cells

Reporting in the journal Nature, researchers say they have created a functional liver using induced pluripotent stem cells. The team of scientists first created “liver buds” and transplanted those into mice, where the buds grew into tissue resembling the adult liver. Anthony Atala of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, who was not affiliated with the work, describes what was done and whether whole, functioning, transplantable organs might be created in this way.