Advanced three-dimensional in vitro liver models to study the activity
of anticancer drugs
Abstract
The liver is one of the most important organs in the human body. It
performs many important functions, including being responsible for the
metabolism of most drugs, which is often associated with its
drug-induced damage. Currently, there are no ideal pharmacological
models that would allow the evaluation of the effect of newly tested
drugs on the liver in preclinical studies. Moreover, the influence of
hepatic metabolism on the effectiveness of the tested drugs is rarely
evaluated. Therefore, in this work we present an advanced model of the
liver, which reflects most of the morphologically and metabolically
important features of the liver in vivo, namely: three-dimensionality,
cellular composition, presence of extracellular matrix, distribution of
individual cell types in the structure of the liver model, high urea and
albumin synthesis efficiency, high cytochrome p450 activity. In
addition, the work, based on the example of commonly used anticancer
drugs, shows how important it is to take into account hepatic metabolism
in the effective assessment of their impact on the target organ, in this
case cancer.