Alejandro Soto-Gutierrez, MD, PhD*

S423 Biomedical Science Tower
200 Lothrop Street
Pittsburgh, PA 15261


Liver-Related Work

Clinical and Research Interests: Dr. Soto-Gutierrez’s clinical interest is focused on the treatment of liver diseases using regenerative and disruptive approaches with the goal of alleviating the currently growing problem of a scarcity of livers for transplantation. His research interest is focused on the development of new technologies for organ replacement using regenerative medicine approaches (auxiliary partial liver transplantation, cell transplantation, cell and organ engineering, genetic reprogramming) to re-generate entire replacement livers. His laboratory is actively working in liver cell differentiation and understanding hepatic maturation of Human induced Pluripotent Stem (iPS) cells using interactions with liver non-parenchymal liver cells, 3D liver matrix, and different molecules. While portions of the studies are carried out in organ culture systems, several ongoing studies are performed in specially-engineered animal models of liver regeneration to understand the repopulation capacities of hepatic tissue or liver grafts derived from human iPS cells.  In addition, Dr. Soto-Gutierrez’s laboratory is interested in strategies for reprogramming diseased livers and to induce super functions in livers (e.g. acute or chronic liver failure, liver steatosis, liver preservation). 
Ongoing Research Studies:
  1. Generation of Livers Derived from Human iPS Cells for Modeling and Understanding Liver Disease and Therapy. 
  2. Generation of Autologous Transplantable and Regeneration-Responsive Auxiliary Bioengineered Livers.
  3. Creation of Biological Systems to Mass-Produce Human Hepatocytes from Human iPS cells.
  4. Liver Tissue Reprogramming to Treat Liver Failure and Acquire Liver Super-Functions.

 

Professor
Department of Pathology

Team Leader, Regenerative Medicine SIG