Table 2.

Advantages and disadvantages of the discussed current approaches used for liver therapy and regeneration.

	Advantages	Disadvantages
Orthotopic Liver Transplantation (OLT)	88% patient survival Clinically defined	Shortage of donors Post-surgery complications Life-long immunosuppressive treatment Organ rejection
Artificial Liver (AL) Device	Detoxification ability Bridge patients to OLT	Selective removal/detoxification of toxins Ineffective against encephalopathy Temporary support device
Cell Transplantation	Surgical procedure safer and less invasive than OLT Partial correction of liver metabolic disorders	Shortage of cells Transitory improvement of patients’ conditions
Bio Artificial Liver (BAL) Device	Improved detoxification ability due to biological components Bridge patients to OLT	Shortage of cells Clinical trials suspended or incomplete Complex set-up and scale-up
Decellularized/Cellularized Liver Scaffolds (Pre-Clinical Development)	Improvement of hepatic cells functions with respect to classic scaffold-based culture approaches Liver-like tissue bio-construction transplantable	Shortage of cells Partial cell repopulation of the scaffolds Slow maturation of the construct Poor viability in pre-clinical studies
Liver Biofabrication and Bioprinting (Pre-Clinical Development)	Easy scale-up of the 3D liver constructs Improvement of hepatic cell maturations with respect to 3D classic culture approaches	Shortage of cells Slow maturation of the construct Contradictory published data on construct viability