Professor Martin Yarmush has been awarded a 2-year, $486K NIH grant entitled, "A Composite Stem Cell Device for Combination Therapy of Acute Liver Failure". The overall goal of this project is to develop a composite cellular bioreactor for the treatment of liver failure that uses both hepatocytes and mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) in a single unit. The work addresses the hypothesis that organ failure can best be treated by a dual approach: function replacement (provided by the hepatocytes), and anti-inflammatory treatment (provided by the MSCs).