Novel Diagnostic Biomarkers for Fatty Liver Disease Presented in Oxford Town Hall
Novel Diagnostic Biomarkers for Fatty Liver Disease Presented in Oxford Town Hall
Metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) encompasses a spectrum of progressive liver disease ranging from fat (simple steatosis) to fat and inflammation (metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis or MASH) in the liver. Approximately 1 in 3 people in the UK have some degree of MASLD and most affected individuals are unaware they have the disease. Currently, the reference standard for assessing MASLD is the liver biopsy, an invasive, painful procedure which can be unreliable and costly. Consequently, there is a need for improved, minimally-invasive methods of determining stages of MASLD in patients.
Dr. Bevin Gangadharan and former post-doc Dr. Abhinav Kumar in Prof. Nicole Zitzmann’s lab have used mass spectrometry-based proteomics to separate proteins in serum from patients with MASLD at various stages of the disease and have identified several potential biomarkers that can determine the severity of the disease, most importantly including ones which can identify the early stages when the disease is still reversible.
Dr. Bevin Gangadharan was invited to give a talk for a Chinese Hepatobiliary Surgery Delegation at the Council Chamber in Oxford Town Hall. The meeting was organised and chaired by Dr. Kevin Liu, a Senior Research Associate in the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics.
Around 50 hepatologists and liver surgeons working at the top teaching hospitals and medical universities in China attended this meeting which was led by Professor Dong Jiahong, Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, Dean of School of Clinical Medicine, Tsinghua University, President of Beijing Tsinghua Changgung Hospital, and Editor-in-Chief of the Chinese Journal of Digestive Surgery and iLiver.
An opening speech and talk on Medical Education and Clinical Training in the UK was given by Professor Andrew Farmery (Head of the Nuffield Department of Anaesthetics and practising Consultant at the John Radcliffe Hospital) followed by Dr. Bevin Gangadharan’s talk on novel MASLD biomarkers which included apolipoprotein F (ApoF), a biomarker which has subsequently also been identified by several other researchers as a promising MASLD biomarker.
See the link below for more information about the work being done on fatty liver disease in the Zitzmann lab: https://zitzmannlab.web.ox.ac.uk/nafld
Since April 2021, Oxford University's KAVLI Institute for Nanoscience Discovery is proudly serving as a hub for research groups from seven different departments spanning both the medical and physical sciences, including Professor Nicole Zitzmann's group from the Department of Biochemistry.
