Novel bioactive polymeric membranes to elicit specific human hepatocyte responses

Novel PEEK-WC-PU membrane results an interesting material which is able to support the long-term maintenance and differentiation of human hepatocytes. These results evidenced a good performance of PEEK-WC-PU membranes in terms of albumin and urea synthesis. Moreover the experiments with the bioreactor demonstrated that the biohybrid system constituted by human hepatocytes and PEEK-WC-PU membrane also elicit the specific metabolic activity and the biotransformation function of the human hepatocytes. Acknowledgments This work was supported by grants from European Commission through the Livebiomat project, Contract No. NMP3-CT-2005-013653.