News by Subject Medicine & Health

In experiments with mice, Brazilian scientists demonstrated that a moderate training protocol reduced liver fat and made the organ more sensitive to insulin, even before loss of body weight occurred.

Scientists from Trinity College Dublin have discovered how the highly infectious and sometimes deadly hepatitis C virus (HCV) 'ghosts' our immune system and remains undiagnosed in many people. By targeting a specific protein, scientists hope to restore effective immune responses against HCV, particularly in patients who do not respond to existing therapy.

One of the most exciting advancements in stem cell research has been the development of organoid systems, which are organ-like three-dimensional structures that mimic their corresponding organ in vivo. In this important review in Digestive and Liver Disease, published by Elsevier, scientists highlight some of the established and exciting novel uses for organoids or 'organs in a dish' in gastroenterology and hepatology and look towards the future in this exciting field.

Scientists successfully bioengineered human liver organoids that faithfully mimic key features of fatal liver disease in the laboratory. This allowed them to uncover underlying disease biology in the organoids and test a potential therapy that in preclinical lab tests reversed an often-fatal childhood condition called Wolman disease. In findings published online by the journal Cell Metabolism, study overcomes major hurdles to unraveling the molecular mysteries of liver diseases and finding desperately needed new therapies.

Researchers from the Hubrecht Institute developed a human model in which they use organoids, or mini organs, to study the function of specific genes that are mutated in liver cancer. Using this method, they have found that mutations in BAP1, a gene commonly mutated in liver cancer, changes the behavior of the cells, which may make them more likely to be invasive. Their results were published in Cell Stem Cell.

A new treatment approach that involves blocking a protein has, for the first time, shown promising results in the treatment of fatty liver disease, in a landmark translational research collaboration between Duke-NUS Medical School, National Heart Centre Singapore and biotech company Enleofen Bio.