Dave Hay Research Group

The liver plays a vital role in human health, including the detoxification of foreign substances. We use stem cells to grow liver tissue in the laboratory. The stem cells we use are called human embryonic stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells. The attraction of using these cell populations is their indefinite growth in the lab and their ability to form all the cells found in the human body. We have developed reliable methods for building human liver tissue. Encouragingly, it behaves in a similar way to the liver found in the human body. We believe our liver tissue has an important part to play in improving human drug development and repurposing; modelling human disease and in the future may provide an alternative source of human tissue to treat failing human liver function.

Professor David Hay

Group Leader

Contact details

• Website: Personal Profile
• Email: david.hay@ed.ac.uk

To develop informative human liver models produced from pluripotent stem cells

To develop implantable human liver tissue derived from pluripotent stem cells

To develop synthetic and natural materials for tissue engineering purposes

Professor Hay recently wrote an article on careers in science for Futurum Careers.

Alvile Kasarinaite, PhD Student

Fatma Kok, Postdoctoral Stem Cell Scientist

Kasia Stefaniak, PhD Student

MRC

BBSRC

Novo Nordisk

Knowledge Transfer Partnership (Innovate UK)

We work collaboratively with a number of groups in Edinburgh:

Stuart Forbes, Mike Shipston, Sue Welburn, Lynne Regan, Anthony Callanan, Anura Rambukkana and Prakash Ramachandran

We collaborate with other researchers in the UK and overseas:

• Jan Hengstler, University of Dortmund
• Cliona O’Farrelly, Trinity College Dublin
• Michael Themis, Brunel University
• Will Shu, Strathclyde University
• Hongwei Ouyang, Zhejiang University
• Wenwen Huang, Zhejiang University
• Chaochen Wang, Zhejiang University
• Jian Liu, Zhenjiang University
• Ying Chi, Zhejiang University
• Yinhua Jin, Zhejiang University

Our industry partners include:

• Ruchi Sharma, Stemnovate
• Klaus Langhoff-Roos, Biolamina
• Dagmara Szkolnicka, Stimuliver