Cyclophilins are a group of proteins involved in cell metabolism and homeostasis. One of the members, CypD, is located in mitochondria and plays an important role as a regulator of mitochondrial permeability transition (mPT) and necrotic cell death resulting in persistent mPT opening that, in turn, leads to hepatic ischemia/reperfusion injury (IRI).
Current therapeutic options for chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) are not effective for all patient subsets and, due to their lack of specificity, often provoke toxicity and off-target effects. CD8+ T cells are essential in the fight against viruses but in chronically HBV-infected patients, these cells become unproductive and difficult to detect. At the recent Annual Meeting of the European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL), Matteo Iannacone, professor of Pathology and Immunology from IRCCS San Raffaele in Milano, presented a novel interleukin 2 (IL-2)-based immunotherapy approach that used a modular cis-targeting platform to tackle HBV infection specifically in patients suffering from chronic viral infection.
Primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC) and nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) are chronic inflammatory liver diseases. It is known that one of the cell signaling molecules overexpressed in the liver during inflammation is IL-18, which is also a marker of hepatocyte injury and liver steatosis.
Hanmi Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. presented early results for two candidates for short bowel syndrome (SBS) and hyperinsulinemia, two diseases with limited approved therapies, at the recent annual meeting of the Endocrine Society (ENDO 2023) in Chicago.
Chronic hepatitis B affects around 250 million people in the world and its cure remains elusive. At the 2023 European Association for the Study of the Liver Congress in Vienna, Austria, Emily Harrison of Precision Biosciences Inc. presented the company’s work on using a naturally occurring endonuclease in the development of its ARCUS gene editing approach to eradicating the persistent viral infection.
Intercept Pharmaceuticals Inc.’s second attempt to score an expanded U.S. FDA approval of its farnesoid X receptor agonist, obeticholic acid, in patients with non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) went the way of the first, with the agency issuing another complete response letter (CRL), prompting the company to drop all NASH-related investment and cut a third of its workforce.
Benobio Co. Ltd. has synthesized novel quinizarin derivatives acting as bromodomain and extra-terminal (BET) protein inhibitors reported to be useful for the treatment of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD).
At the ongoing European Association for the Study of the Liver meeting, researchers from Suzhou Ribo Life Science Co. Ltd. presented preclinical data on RBD-1016 in two models of chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection.
Researchers from Inipharm Inc. presented preclinical data for INI-822, a small-molecule inhibitor of HSD17B13, being developed for the treatment of liver disease.
While the liver is mostly known as the core of metabolism, contributing to the storage of nutrients and excretion of toxic substances, there is an increasing interest in how it interacts with the central nervous system through the liver-brain axis. At the 2023 European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL) meeting in Vienna, Austria, group leader Kristina Schoonjans and her colleague Hadrien Demagny from the Laboratory of Metabolic Signaling at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland, gave talks setting out the context of inter-organ communication in liver disease, adding new findings from their research in the liver-brain axis.
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