UC San Diego, Samsara collaborate for new liver tissue model

University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and Samsara Sciences, Inc., announced a new collaboration focused on developing new methods to isolate and characterize liver cells to assist in further research for the treatment of liver disease.

Tatiana Kisseleva, MD, PhD, assistant adjunct professor in the department of surgery, UC San Diego School of Medicine, and colleagues will focus their research on hepatocytes and other supportive cells within the liver relevant to the human body. Protocols for isolating specialized human liver cells will be developed, optimized and then used in Kisseleva’s own research at UC San Diego for characterization in various laboratory and animal models, according to the release.

The release also states that Samsara Sciences will commercially provide the specialized cells for use in bioprinted tissues and other cell-based models for drug testing, disease modeling, drug discovery and regenerative medicine research.

“Samsara’s resources will allow us to generate high-quality cells to conduct translational research on liver injury, cirrhosis and cancer, while Samsara benefits from our expertise in liver cell isolation and characterization,” Kisseleva said in the release.

Sharon Presnell, PhD, president of Samsara Sciences, said in the release: “We’re extremely excited to be working with Dr. Kisseleva. As a leading expert in liver cell biology, she is well positioned to develop isolation and characterization strategies that yield stellate and other support cells that are ideally suited for use in 3D-bioprinted tissue applications.”

Disclosure: Presnell is employed by Samsara Sciences. Healio.com/Hepatology was unable to confirm relevant financial disclosures of Kisseleva at the time of publication.