ABSTRACT
Liver failure is a serious stage during liver disease development of which mobidity is high. There is no effective treatment at present.Artificial liver support system is one of the important methods to treat liver failure which includes non-biological artificial liver, biological artificial liver and hybrid artificial liver. Among the artificial liver devices. The bioartificial liver is the most similar artifical liver device to human liver in terms of detoxification, synthesis and metabolism currently.The complexity of human liver function makes the biological artificial liver facing great challenges in selection of liver seed cells, construction of bioreactor and the best combination with auxiliary device, which leads to the slow development of bioartificial liver. In order to provide theoretical support for the study of bioartificial liver, the current status and its development are reviewed in the following aspects, the source of seed cells, the construction of bioreactor, the combination of auxiliary devices and the clinical application of bioartificial liver in this article.