Primary hepatocyte cultures are considered as a useful in vitro system for pharmacological/toxicological studies. Although expression of drug-metabolizing enzymes and canalicular drug transporters has been well documented in this cellular model, less information is available about sinusoidal drug transporter activities. This has led us to investigate functional expression of the major sinusoida...

[Purpose] The present study aimed to determine the effects of short muscle strength exercise on hepatocyte growth factor expression and satellite cell activation. [Subjects] The study included 72 2-12-week-old male Sprague-Dawley rats. [Methods] The rat plantaris muscle was contracted with a 5-min electrical stimulation of the sciatic nerve, and then, the mRNA expressions of hepatocyte growth f...

Recently, sandwich-cultured (SC) rat hepatocytes have been used as an in vitro model to assess biliary excretion of drugs and xenobiotics. The purpose of the present study was to validate the use of SC rat hepatocytes for the in vitro assessment of P-glycoprotein (P-gp)-mediated biliary drug excretion. The specific and fluorescent P-gp substrate rhodamine 123 (Rh123) and the P-gp substrate digo...

The elucidation of the effect of extracellular matrices on hepatocellular metabolism is critical to understand the mechanism of functional upregulation. We have developed a system using natural extracellular matrices [Adipogel] for enhanced albumin synthesis of rat hepatocyte cultures for a period of 10 days as compared to collagen sandwich cultures. Primary rat hepatocytes isolated from livers...

Sixty-four compounds with diverse structures were used in evaluation of intrinsic clearance by various hepatocyte preparations from rats, dogs, monkeys, and humans. Intrinsic clearance (CL(int)) was calculated from the ratio of the initial amount of the test compound minus the amount remaining after 2 h of incubation and the corresponding area under the concentration versus time curve. The pred...

Contents Molecular pathways in hepatocyte proliferation 1 G.G.Skouteris HGF and liver growth regulation 13 G.KMichalopoulos Structure, pleiotropic actions and organotrophic roles 33 of hepatocyte growth factor K.Matsumoto and Τ.Nakamura Hepatocyte Growth Factor and its variant with a deletion 55 of five amino-acids are distinguishable in biological, physicochemical and immunochemical properties...

The use of cultured primary hepatocytes within toxicology has proven to be a valuable tool for researchers, however, questions remain with regard to functional differences observed in these hepatocytes relative to the intact liver. Cultured hepatocytes have typically been described as dedifferentiated, a classification based upon the investigation of a few key cellular processes or hepatocellul...

Vanadate inactivated rat hepatocyte glycogen synthase and activated glycogen phosphorylase in a dose- and time-dependent manner. These effects were observed in hepatocytes from both fasted as well as fed rats. When rat hepatocytes were preincubated with [32P]phosphate and then with vanadate, and the 32P-labeled glycogen synthase was specifically immunoprecipitated, it was observed that vanadate...

A sensitive, rapid, and simple method is presented for the simultaneous quantitation of the major phospholipids and neutral lipids using an image analyzer after separation by one-dimensional thin-layer chromatography. A clear-cut separation of the lipids was achieved on one EDTA-impregnated chromatoplate with five step-wise developments. An image was acquired, and the integrated optical densiti...

Tumorigenesis caused by the peroxisome proliferator (PP) class of non-genotoxic hepatocarcinogens is species restricted; rat and mouse are considered responsive whereas the available evidence suggests that humans, non-human primates, dogs, hamsters and guinea pigs are non-responsive. We have demonstrated previously that the PP, nafenopin can suppress rat hepatocyte apoptosis both in vitro and i...