Pericentral hepatocytes produce insulin-like growth factor-2 to promote liver regeneration during selected injuries in mice.

Liver regeneration (LR) happens after various types of injuries. Unlike the well-studied LR caused by partial hepatectomy (PHx), there is accumulating evidence suggesting that LR during other injuries may result from unknown mechanisms. In this study, we found that insulin-like growth factor 2 (IGF-2) was drastically induced following the liver injuries caused by tyrosinemia or long-term treatments of CCl4 . However, this was not observed during the early phase of acute liver injuries after PHx or single treatment of CCl4 . Remarkably, most IGF-2-expressing hepatocytes were located at the histological area around the central vein of the liver lobule after the liver injuries caused either in fumarylacetoacetate hydrolase-deficient mice or in CCl4 chronically treated mice. Hepatocyte proliferation in vivo was significantly promoted by induced IGF-2 overexpression, which could be inhibited by adeno-associated virus-delivered IGF-2 short hairpin RNAs or linsitinib, an inhibitor of IGF-2 signaling. Proliferating hepatocytes in vivo responded to IGF-2 through both insulin receptor and IGF-1 receptor. IGF-2 also significantly promoted DNA synthesis of primary hepatocytes in vitro. More interestingly, the significantly induced IGF-2 was also found to colocalize with glutamine synthetase in the region enriched with proliferating hepatocytes for the liver samples from patients with liver fibrosis.

CONCLUSION: IGF-2 is produced by pericentral hepatocytes to promote hepatocyte proliferation and repair tissue damage in the setting of chronic liver injury, which is distinct from the signaling that occurs post-PHx. (Hepatology 2017;66:2002-2015).