Minireviews
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2019. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Mar 7, 2019; 25(9): 1037-1049
Published online Mar 7, 2019. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v25.i9.1037
Liver stem cells: Plasticity of the liver epithelium
Atsunori Tsuchiya, Wei-Yu Lu
Atsunori Tsuchiya, Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Graduate school of medical and dental sciences, Niigata University, Chuo-ku, Niigata 951-8510, Japan
Wei-Yu Lu, Centre for Liver and Gastrointestinal Research, Institute of Immunology and Immunotherapy, the University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT, United Kingdom
Author contributions: Tsuchiya A and Lu WY contributed equally to this work.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All authors declare no conflicts-of-interest related to 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 Non Commercial (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: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Wei-Yu Lu, PhD, Research Fellow, Centre for Liver and Gastrointestinal Research, Institute of Immunology and Immunotherapy, the University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT, United Kingdom. w.lu.3@bham.ac.uk
Telephone: +44-121-4146854 Fax: +44-121-4158701
Received: October 25, 2018
Peer-review started: October 26, 2018
First decision: November 29, 2018
Revised: January 21, 2019
Accepted: January 26, 2019
Article in press: January 26, 2019
Published online: March 7, 2019
Processing time: 133 Days and 10.3 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: There have been controversies regarding the existence of a true liver stem cell population. Nevertheless, more evidence is beginning to reveal that cellular plasticity in the liver plays a role in liver regeneration. This mini-review highlights recent findings about plasticity in the liver epithelium.