Hallmarks of postoperative liver regeneration: An updated insight on the regulatory mechanisms

Abstract

Performance and advances in liver surgery makes remarkable progress of the understanding of liver regeneration. Liver regeneration after liver resection has been widely researched, and the underlying mechanism mostly concerns proliferation of hepatocytes and the influence by inflammation through activation of Kupffer cells and the other parenchymal cells, the second regenerative pathway by hepatic progenitor cells (HPCs), inducing angiogenesis, remodeling of a extracellular matrix (ECM), and termination mechanisms. New clinical surgeries and the updated multiomics analysis are exploiting the remarkable progress, especially in immune regulation and metabolic process of two emerging hallmarks. This review briefly represents a systemic outline of eight hallmarks, including hepatocyte proliferation, contribution of hepatic progenitor cells, inducing angiogenesis, reprogramming of the extracellular matrix, apoptosis and termination of proliferation, inflammation, immune and metabolic regulation, which are set as organizing characteristics of postoperative liver regeneration and future directions of refining treatment targets.

Keywords: Kupffer cell; angiogenesis; extracellular matrix; hepatic progenitor cell; liver regeneration.