Progress in multi-disciplinary therapy for primary liver cancer (PLC) increases the 5-year survival rate from 2.6％ to 20.6％.However,the overall survival rate failed to increase significantly in the past twenty years because of lack of standardization in treatment of PLC.It is important to establish clinical guidelines which are based on randomized controlled trials,meta analysis,or systematic reviews.This review summarizes the pertinent clinical trials on PLC therapies published before October 2010.The articles were selected by a comprehensive literature search using the terms ‘liver neoplasms',‘ hepatectomy',‘ liver transplantation',‘ transarterial chemoembolization',‘ radiofrequency ablation',‘ percutaneous ethanol injection',‘ radiotherapy',‘ biological therapy',‘ chemotherapy',or ‘ Chinese herbs’.

The lack of organ donors is a major obstacle against the application of liver transplantation.Recently,how to expand the source of liver donors has become a focus of transplantation research.The use of marginal donor may help solve current dilemma between the increasing waiting recipients and the relatively few donors.However,marginal donors always comes with elevated risk of primary nonfunction,initial poor function,delayed graft function loss and infection.Research on risk factors and complication preventing strategies of marginal donor transplantation is important in improving our understanding of liver transplantation.In the present article,we summarized recent progress in the research of marginal donors.And based on the experience from our center,we believe that the use of marginal donors in liver transplantation may help improve the situation of donor shortage,and isehemia-reperfusion injury remains the core topic of marginal donor transplantation and represents the direction of future study.

Liver failure is a dreaded and often fatal complication that sometimes follows partial hepatectomy.This article reviews the pathophysiology, risk factors and treatment of post-resectional liver failure (PLF). An inadequate quantity or quality of residual liver mass are the key event in its pathogenesis. The major risk factors are small remnant liver volume (RLV), excessive blood loss or transfusion, ICGR15 of greater than 20%, and F4/F3 liver cirrhosis. It is essential to identify these risk factors during the pre-operative assessment. Preventive measures should be applied whenever possible as options of curative treatment for PLF are limited. Artificial liver and/or liver transplantation are the important treatment alternatives for hepatic failure after hepatectomy.

To sacrifice the function of the sphincter of Oddi in the routine management of iatrogenic biliary injury,e.g. by using cholangio-enterostomies, is often complicated by ascending biliary infection, cholangitis and an increased risk of cholangiocarcinoma. It is necessary to find a material which can protect the bile duct. As reported, biodegradable materials which are hopeful to be used clinically have the advantages of being non-immunogenic, gives temporary supportive function, and produces harmless degradation products. This article aims to review the advances in researches on biodegradable materials for bile duct repair.

Acute-on-chronic liver failure is a common form of liver failure characterized by complicated clinical manifestations and high mortality.The pathophysiology of ACLF is still unclear.More efficacious treatments are based mainly on a better understanding of the pathophysiology of ACLF.The advances in the pathophysiology of ACLF have been extremely encouraging in the last few years.In this article,we reviewed the progress of ACLF,its definition,etiology and,pathophysiology.

Hepatocyte is the core raw materials of bioartificial liver support system, primary hepatocyte is lim-ited to application because of short survival and difficult cul-ture in vitro. Porcine hepatocyte which has been used re-cently exist the risks of endogenous retrovirus transmission.With the development of molecular biology, it has been pos-sible that hepatocyte is immortalized recently. Immortalized hepatocytes have greatly significant to drug toxicology, bio-artificial liver support system and tissue engineering of liver.Therefore, we will review the prospects for research and ap-plication of immortalized hepatocytes.

The hypothesis that tumor comes from stem cells has been demonstrated in various human tumors.Cancer is not only a genetic disease but also a stem cell disease. It is a key to regeneration, mutations and recurrence of tumors that gene mutations affect stem cells, and then stem cells mutate to cancer stem cells. In an effort to review the evidence that liver cancer stem cells exist, two fundamental questions must be addressed. First, do hepatocellular carcinomas(HCC)arise from liver stem cells? Second, do HCCs contain cells that possess properties of cancer stem cells?More recently, there is a hypothesis that HCC arise from maturation arrest of liver stem cells. Analysis of the cells in HCC supports the presence of cells with stem-cell properties(ie, immortality, transplantability, and resistance to therapy). However, definitive markers for these putative cancer stem cells have not yet been found and a liver cancer stem cell has not been isolated.

Objective To study the expression of gastrin receptor in 4 HCC cell lines and tis-sues and their relation to clinieopathological features. Methods Immunohistochemical staining of GR was performed for the 4 HCC cell lines and the paraffin sections of 25 HCC cases. The relationship be-tween the GR expression in HCC sections and the clinicopatho[ogical parameters were analyzed. Results Positive staining for GR in the 3 HCC SMMC-7721>HepG2>QGY-7701 cell lines and HCC tissues was observed. The expression rate of gastrin receptor was 56 % (14/25). However, there was no association between expression of GR and elinieopathologieal features such as age, gender and clini-cal stage etc except for tumor thrombosis. Concision GR exists in the HCC. Futher study is needed to identify whether GR is a applicable target for endocrine therapy in HCC.

Cells and scaffolds are two key elements of tissue engineering,while the viabilitv of cells is mainly depended on the nature of scaffolds.A suitable scaffold should simulate the internal environment as well as possible,which is necessary for the growth of cells.The nanometer structured biomaterials have become more and more popular in the study of tissue engineering due to their ability to perfectly simulate the topography of the microenvironment.This paper summarized the advances in the application of nanometer structured materials in the in vitro cell cultures.The mechanisms of the promoting effect of nano.structured biomaterials on the cell growth and the application of nano-structured materials in liver tissue engineering are discussed.

Nowadays,stem cells are recognized as the most promising seed cells of tissue engineering due to their self replication ability and multilineage differentiation potential.In order to apply them to tissue engineering,a variety of physical and biochemical methods were tried to promote the proliferation,function and differentiation,and good effects were achieved.Recently,as a rising method of physical stimulation,electrical stimulation received more and more attention and had been proved to have good effects on stem cell proliferation and differentiation.This paper summarized the advances in promoting effects of electrical stimulation on stem cell proliferation and differentiation,and discussed the possible mechanisms of stem cell differentiation induced by electrical stimulation.