Finding novel therapeutic targets and biomarkers for NonAlcoholic SteatoHepatitis
TranslATe-NASH will identify immune-related mechanisms involved in Non-Alcoholic SteatoHepatitis (NASH) for new diagnostic and treatment options. Currently, there are no treatments and no simple blood tests for diagnosis, leaving this condition often unrecognized and untreated.
Together with the Dutch Obesity Clinic, we will obtain human tissues and blood samples to investigate the involvement of immune cells in NASH and how they are activated. With Flowview diagnostics, we will perform bioinformatics analysis to discover new markers and pathways that are important for developing liver inflammation, which is a crucial step in disease progression.
Estimates suggest that 52 million people have a fatty liver with an annual cost of €35 billion (€1163 per patient). Finding novel means to diagnose NASH more early and identifying new therapeutic targets will significantly reduce the burden of this disease.
Based on our experimental data and the fact that obesity is a strong risk factor for NAFLD, translate-NASH will focus on the role of immune cells in the adipose tissue-liver axis in obese individuals. Using our unique access to human paired tissue and blood samples, we will use flow cytometry and multivariate bioinformatics analysis to find new immune-related mechanisms that underlie the development of NASH in humans and the important cross-talk with adipose tissue.
The data generated will provide crucial information on the human adipose tissue-liver axis in NASH. The mechanisms, pathways and markers discovered in this project will directly feed the development of diagnostic tests and novel avenues for the design of treatment for NASH.
