Translating Regenerative Surgery on the Liver From Concept to Therapeutic Reality

The UCSF Division of General Surgery announces the launch of a new website for The Chang Laboratory for Liver Tissue Engineering. Tissue engineering and regeneration are the next evolutionary step in surgical practice. The lab’s goal is to make significant contributions to bringing regenerative surgical therapies from the lab into the operating room. The lab focuses on a complex and vital solid organ, the liver to address the great clinical need to develop alternative therapies for end stage liver disease, currently treated by liver transplantation and severely limited by the shortage of donor organs. Moreover, the liver has an enormous innate capacity to regenerate in response to injury and metabolic demand, a feature that can be exploited to facilitate development of regenerative surgical approaches.