Liver related diseases research & treatment

waltky · Jul 2, 2012

Sugar 'to shape synthetic liver'...

3D-printed sugar network to help grow artificial liver
2 July 2012 : Researchers have moved a step closer to creating a synthetic liver, after a US team created a template for blood vessels to grow into, using sugar.

Scientists have long been experimenting with the 3D printing of cells and blood vessels, building up tissue structure layer by layer with artificial cells. But the synthetically engineered cells often die before the tissue is formed. The technology, in which a 3D printer uses sugar as its building material, could one day be used for transplants. The study appears in the journal Nature Materials.

Dr Jordan Miller from the lab of the lead scientist, Dr Christopher Chen, at the University of Pennsylvania, told BBC News: "The big challenge in understanding how to grow large artificial tissue is how to keep all the cells alive in these engineered tissues, because when you put a lot of cells together, they end up taking nutrients and oxygen from neighbouring cells and end up suffocating and dying," he said. The body's cardiovascular system - blood vessels - solves this issue with natural cells and tissues.

So a group of scientists from the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) decided to build a synthetic vascular system that would serve the same purpose - by creating a place where the future artificial blood vessels would be located. Dr Miller's colleague Prof Sangeeta Bhatia, from MIT, said that the technique was similar to creating the shape of a vase in wax, surrounding it with molten metal and then melting the wax away.

Sugar use

But instead of wax, the team used sugar. "So far, it's been difficult to make organs big enough so that they could provide useful function - and if you implant any tissue thicker than about a millimetre, we can't provide it enough without also engineering blood vessels into the tissue," said Prof Bhatia. "We created a network of places that we wish vessels to grow into, so they would become piping into the tissue, and we printed those in 3D out of sugar.

More http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-18677627
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waltky · Nov 12, 2012

Chemotherapy bath for liver cancer...

First liver cancer 'chemo-bath' in the UK
11 November 2012 : Chemotherapy affects the whole body and can cause side effects

A "chemo-bath" which delivers toxic cancer drugs to just one organ in the body has been used on patients in the UK for the first time, say doctors. Chemotherapy drugs kill rapidly growing cells such as cancers, but they also attack healthy parts of the body. Doctors at Southampton General Hospital believe targeting just one organ can prevent side effects. They also say it means they can give higher doses without causing damage to the patient. Chemotherapy drugs are normally injected into the veins of patients. However, the whole body, rather than just the tumour, is exposed. It results in side effects such as fatigue, feeling sick, hair loss and damage to fertility.

Targeted

Two patients in the UK have now received chemotherapy focused on just their liver. Both had a rare eye cancer which had spread to the liver. The operation works by inflating balloons inside blood vessels on either side of the liver to isolate it from the rest of the body. The liver is then pumped full of chemotherapy drugs, which are filtered out before the liver is reconnected to the main blood supply. It means only a tiny fraction of the chemotherapy dose ends up in the body.

Dr Brian Stedman, a consultant interventional radiologist, said: "To cut off an organ from the body for 60 minutes, soak it in a high dose of drug and then filter the blood almost completely clean before returning is truly groundbreaking. "Previously, the outlook for patients specifically suffering from cancer which has spread to the liver has been poor because standard chemotherapy's effect is limited by the unwanted damage the drug causes to the rest of the body." The surgery took place in the past three months and both patients are said to be doing well and their tumours "all look smaller", he said.

Dr Stedman told the BBC: "In 20 years' time the idea of injecting a drug which poisons the whole body for a cancer in just one small area will seem bonkers." He suggested that any organ which could be easily separated from the blood supply, such as the kidney, pancreas and lungs, would be suitable for this kind of approach. However, he said the method was "in its infancy" and he was "not sure this is the finished product or the end of the story". The technique is also being tested in the US and elsewhere in Europe.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-20270400
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Richard Powell · Nov 19, 2012

I have heard a lot about liver disease which can make a person fortunately there is treatment of all these problems.

waltky · May 4, 2013

Livers regrow after damage...

Some liver transplants 'avoidable'
4 May 2013 - Some patients with severely damaged livers may not need a transplant as their own organ is actually regrowing, say doctors at a hospital in London.

They made the discovery by looking at a rare group of patients given a transplant while their own damaged liver is left in the body. Sometimes the original liver recovers. A study, in the American Journal of Transplantation, suggests doctors can predict which patients do not need a transplant as their liver is healing. King's College Hospital has a leading liver transplant centre and is one of few places to perform "auxiliary transplants". They are performed in sudden cases of liver failure caused by overdoses or viral infections, rather than the long-term damage caused by alcohol abuse. Normally in organ transplants one organ comes out and a new one goes in. However, in this complex operation the transplant is put in beside the old liver.

After any transplant a patient needs to take a lifetime of drugs to suppress the immune system in order to avoid rejection. The drugs leave the body vulnerable to infection. However, if the patient's liver does eventually recover then they can come off the immunosuppressant drugs and their body will get rid of the transplant. The transplant is used to get the patient past the critical stage of the illness. But the recovery happens only in some patients. In the study, the transplant was no longer needed in seven out of 11 patients. So doctors analysed the detailed chemistry inside the liver cells of patients and looked for differences between those who recovered and those who did not.

The liver clears the body of toxins

Dr Varuna Aluvihare told the BBC: "There was a big difference right from the point of transplantation in the expression of some very small molecules between the group that would, three years down the line, regrow their liver versus the group that never did." Those molecules regulated the way cells in the liver grow. "Some of them were already starting to regrow. So what we may be able to do is come up with a better set of tests to allow us to identify those patients who are already regrowing and may not need transplantation. "So we may be able to remove a group from the transplant list." The liver does have a phenomenal ability to regenerate. In healthy people it will recover in the space of months even if a large amount is taken away. People who need a transplant because of acute liver failure are seriously ill. Even if doctors could tell which patients' livers were already on the path to recovery, they would still need to keep those patients alive long enough for the liver to return to form.

Dr Aluvihare argued this would be possible as a small amount of restored liver function would be enough for patients to leave hospital. He said there are cases at King's of patients recovering while they were on the waiting list. "I would say five to 10 patients a year we seriously consider for emergency transplantation and then they start recovering. "That tells us there probably is a pool there and there is probably quite a lot of mileage in identifying people would would recover." Whether this would work is still uncertain. The team have received funding to look for those chemical differences in the blood of patients.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-22399717
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waltky · May 20, 2013

First thing inna mornin' Granny has a cup o' coffee...

Coffee May Protect Against Liver Disease
May 20, 2013 - Coffee lovers have another reason to rejoice as a new study claims that regular consumption of the popular beverage can reduce the risk of a rare but serious liver disease.

According to research published by the Mayo Clinic, coffee intake can lower the chance of contracting primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC), an autoimmune liver disease. The disease can lead to cirrhosis of the liver, liver failure and biliary cancer. "While rare, PSC has extremely detrimental effects," said the studys author, Dr. Craig Lammert, a Mayo Clinic gastroenterologist. "We're always looking for ways to mitigate risk, and our first-time finding points to a novel environmental factor that also might help us to determine the cause of this and other devastating autoimmune diseases."

The study monitored three groups of people, those with PSC, those with primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC), another autoimmune liver disease, and a group of healthy patients. The data showed a reduced risk of PSC among coffee drinkers, but little effect on the PBC group. According to Dr. Konstantinos Lazaridis, a Mayo Clinic hepatologist and senior study author, the research also revealed more differences between PSC and PBC than originally thought. "Moving forward, we can look at what this finding might tell us about the causes of these diseases and how to better treat them," he said.

The findings were being presented at the Digestive Disease Week 2013 conference in Orlando, Fla. Previous studies have shown some benefits to regular, moderate coffee intake. A study of coffee drinkers released late last year in Europe claimed moderate coffee intake could reduce the risk of diabetes by 25 percent, while a Swedish study claimed coffee reduced the risk of developing breast cancer.

http://www.voanews.com/content/coffee-may-protect-against-liver-disease/1664647.html
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waltky · Jan 13, 2016

Liver cancer is 2nd most deadly form of cancer worldwide...

Study: Western Liver Cancer Standards Inadequate
January 12, 2016 - Experts are calling for more targeted standards in developing countries to help diagnose and treat risk factors for liver cancer. It's currently the second most deadly form of cancer worldwide.

Liver cancer accounts for some 750,000 deaths a year globally. Experts say only pancreatic cancer accounts for more deaths. In Western countries, liver cancer typically strikes middle age men over 60, who drink alcohol and smoke cigarettes. But the patient profile is a bit different in developing countries, including sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and China. There, its not uncommon to see liver cancer in young people. It can be four or five decades earlier, so in fact you are losing half of your life when you are in such major trouble," said Pascal Pineau.

Pineau, a cancer geneticist at Pasteur Institute in Paris, says more than 86 percent of liver cancer deaths occur in the developing world, but standards to diagnose and treat the disease follow guidelines based on the older Western patients. The guidelines help doctors determine the best course of treatment. Pineau was part of a team of French and Peruvian researchers who conducted a study in the Latin American country involving 250 liver cancer patients who underwent surgery. Their average age was 36, and relatively few had cirrhosis, or hardening of liver tissue, which is common in Western liver cancer patients.

Chemotherapy medicine is readied for a liver cancer patient at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md.

Under the treatment guidelines, Pineau says those patients might have been written off as incurable, despite their young age and the lack of cirrhosis. They would not have been given potentially life-extending treatment, including surgery, for the lethal disease. Pineau says most patients in developing countries get the most common form of liver cancer (hepatocellular carcinoma) after being infected with hepatitis B for a long period of time. You are living in sub-Saharan Africa and you are infected with hepatitis B virus, but you are also eating food contaminated with toxins from microscopic fungi, and then you will develop the liver cancer," he said.

He says many liver cancers worldwide could be avoided through hepatitis B vaccination, but theres a hitch. The vaccine, endorsed by the World Health Organization, is a series of four injections that Pineau says is not easy to get for many people living in remote areas. I suspect that in some occasions, the vaccination is not done. The immunization is not done," he said. In addition to increasing the number of people who get vaccinated against hepatitis B, writing in the journal Heliyon, Pineau and colleagues call for changing the treatment guidelines to help young liver cancer patients who for now might be considered incurable.

http://www.voanews.com/content/study-western-liver-cancer-standards-inadequate/3142297.html
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See also:

E. Africa Launches Program to Prevent, Control Pandemic Threats
January 13, 2016 Starting in 2014, West Africa experienced the largest Ebola outbreak in history, killing more than 11,000 people and bringing the threat of global pandemic to worldwide consciousness. Scientists believe the outbreak started with a small boy who contracted the virus from a bat.

But Ebola is hardly the only disease caused by microbes transferred between animals and humans, and as the global population continues to grow, along with demand for food, similar threats are likely to arise. Tuesday at a hotel in Nairobi, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization and the U.S. Agency for International Development launched the East African component of FAOs Emerging Pandemic Threats, or EPT-2 program. The program is designed to help detect, prevent, and control new "zoonotic" diseases, meaning those which can be passed between animals and humans.

Subhash Morzaria is the global coordinator of the EPT-2 program at FAO. He said these diseases can be transmitted through the air or by touching infected fluids or materials. Whatever the mode of transmission ... if these infectious diseases persist in our animal populations, then we have a constant risk of this disease potentially becoming pandemic and causing huge, huge outbreaks and morbidity and mortality in humans, and in animals as well, said Morzaria. Ebola is only one of the zoonotic diseases. Others include HIV and AIDS, influenza, including those commonly known as avian flu and swine flu, and SARS, MERS-CoV, Marburg, and Nipah. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an estimated six out of every 10 infectious diseases in humans are spread from animals.

This undated colorized transmission electron micrograph image made available by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows an Ebola virus virion, or infectious agent.

More people, more risk

The United Nations projects that the worlds current population of 7.3 billion people will reach 9.7 billion in 2050. This rapid increase in the number of people means that the demand for food will also rise. Now these production systems will change very rapidly to meet this demand, and its possible that some very risky practices in the production of livestock might occur, and these risky practices might create an environment for evolution of new pathogens and spread, FAOs Morzaria said. Kenyas director of veterinary services, Dr. Kisa Juma Ngeiywa, said new pathogens can spread further than ever in todays mobile society. Let me use the H7N9 influenza, which was in China, said Ngeiywa. That is a disease, one of the influenzas on live bird markets. Now, if you look at the airplanes, Kenya Airways, Ethiopian Airlines, and others, they are going to China and they are coming to Kenya, every day. So, because of that there is a big vulnerability, unless we put measures to be able to see and stop it from spreading.

And Morzaria said that everyone has a stake in the process. Everybody is at threat. The virus doesnt distinguish between a poor and a rich person. It goes and infects and it kills that person if its highly infectious and pathogenic, he said. So I think this is a global concern. In October, USAID announced $87 million in new funding for the program. The money will be used to help governments and veterinary services better understand livestock systems and to help conduct proactive surveillance, as well as identifying current and potential pathogens.

http://www.voanews.com/content/prog...prevent-control-pandemic-threats/3143351.html
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waltky · Feb 24, 2016

Cancer of the pancreas is actually 4 separate diseases...

Major insight into killer pancreatic cancer
Wed, 24 Feb 2016 - Pancreatic cancer is at least four separate diseases each with a different cause and needing a different treatment, scientists have discovered.

The researchers say the knowledge will lead to new drugs targeting the Achilles' heel of each patients' cancer and that they have already seen some "exceptional" results. Cancer charities said the findings were "incredibly exciting". The analysis, published in the journal Nature, looked at 456 patients' cancer. Tumours are caused by mutations in DNA that make healthy tissue turn cancerous - but there is more than one way to make a cancer. While all the pancreatic cancers looked similar, there were four classes of genetic error that led to tumour formation.

And these four cancers have been labelled:

*squamous-type
*pancreatic progenitor
*immunogenic
*aberrantly differentiated endocrine exocrine

New treatments
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waltky · Jan 2, 2017

Can GM pigs produce organs compatible with humans...

Researchers Investigate New Treatments for Leading Cancers
January 02, 2017 | WASHINGTON Scientists are investigating new ways of treating people with liver cancer. The methods range from developing an artificial liver, to seeing if genetically-modified pigs can produce organs compatible with humans.

For those who have liver cancer, their only cure lies in a liver transplant or removal of the cancerous part of the organ. Both require major surgery. And, patients who get a transplant will need to take immuno-suppressant drugs for the rest of their lives. However, scientists are working on a new approach that is minimally invasive. With both chemotherapy and radiation, healthy cells around the tumor are damaged. But this approach involves the use of natural, non-toxic chemical compounds from plants.

Kattesh Katti, a professor at the University of Missouri School of Medicine, led a study that used nanotechnology to target and destroy precancerous tumor cells in the livers of mice and in in-vitro human cells. It sounds like a fairy tale, but we are really in advanced stages in terms of tumor treatment, in terms of disease diagnostics," said Katti.

Researchers Investigate New Treatments for Leading Cancers

Katti's work involved very small particles of gold encapsulated in a protective stabilizer from an acacia tree. The particles attract precancerous and malignant cells, which are far more susceptible to lower levels of heat than healthy cells. The patient will be administered with these nano particles. Within a couple of hours, the patient will be treated with lasers, and then the patient can go home. So, there is no radioactivity. There is no toxic waste. There is no toxicity, systemic toxicity, to the patient, said Katti.

Katti said the cost of treatment will be low because one gram of gold can be used to treat 50 patients, and what's more, Katti says this type of treatment could be used for other types of cancer, arthritis and other debilitating diseases. The next step is a clinical trial in humans. Should this technique work, it will be good news for the nearly 800,000 people who are diagnosed with liver cancer each year and it could help save the lives of some 700,000 people who die each year from the disease.

http://www.voanews.com/a/researchers-investigate-new-treatments-for-leading-cancers/3659496.html
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waltky · Nov 23, 2017

It can take decades for symptoms to appear...

VA study shows parasite from Vietnam may be killing veterans
22 Nov.`17 — A half a century after serving in Vietnam, hundreds of veterans have a new reason to believe they may be dying from a silent bullet — test results show some men may have been infected by a slow-killing parasite while fighting in the jungles of Southeast Asia.

The Department of Veterans Affairs this spring commissioned a small pilot study to look into the link between liver flukes ingested through raw or undercooked fish and a rare bile duct cancer. It can take decades for symptoms to appear. By then, patients are often in tremendous pain, with just a few months to live. Of the 50 blood samples submitted, more than 20 percent came back positive or bordering positive for liver fluke antibodies, said Sung-Tae Hong, the tropical medicine specialist who carried out the tests at Seoul National University in South Korea. “It was surprising,” he said, stressing the preliminary results could include false positives and that the research is ongoing.

Northport VA Medical Center spokesman Christopher Goodman confirmed the New York facility collected the samples and sent them to the lab. He would not comment on the findings, but said everyone who tested positive was notified. Gerry Wiggins, who served in Vietnam from 1968 to 1969, has already lost friends to the disease. He was among those who got the call. “I was in a state of shock,” he said. “I didn’t think it would be me.” The 69-year-old, who lives in Port Jefferson Station, New York, didn’t have any symptoms when he agreed to take part in the study, but hoped his participation could help save lives. He immediately scheduled further tests, discovering he had two cysts on his bile duct, which had the potential to develop into the cancer, known as cholangiocarcinoma. They have since been removed and — for now — he’s doing well.

Though rarely found in Americans, the parasites infect an estimated 25 million people worldwide. Endemic in the rivers of Vietnam, the worms can easily be wiped out with a handful of pills early on, but left untreated they can live for decades without making their hosts sick. Over time, swelling and inflammation of the bile duct can lead to cancer. Jaundice, itchy skin, weight loss and other symptoms appear only when the disease is in its final stages. The VA study, along with a call by Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer of New York for broader research into liver flukes and cancer-stricken veterans, began after The Associated Press raised the issue in a story last year. The reporting found that about 700 veterans with cholangiocarcinoma have been seen by the VA in the past 15 years. Less than half of them submitted claims for service-related benefits, mostly because they were not aware of a possible connection to Vietnam. The VA rejected 80 percent of the requests, but decisions often appeared to be haphazard or contradictory, depending on what desks they landed on, the AP found.

The numbers of claims submitted reached 60 in 2017, up from 41 last year. Nearly three out of four of those cases were also denied, even though the government posted a warning on its website this year saying veterans who ate raw or undercooked freshwater fish while in Vietnam might be at risk. It stopped short of urging them to get ultrasounds or other tests, saying there was currently no evidence the vets had higher infection rates than the general population. “We are taking this seriously,” said Curt Cashour, a spokesman with the Department of Veterans Affairs. “But until further research, a recommendation cannot be made either way.”

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Empress · Nov 25, 2017

Somehow it doesn't surprise me. Tropical climates breed some horrifying diseases and parasites.

waltky · Aug 16, 2018

Liver transplants a thing of the past?...

Liver transplants 'may be unnecessary thanks to new drug treatment'
16 August 2018 - A potential treatment for sudden liver failure could cut the need for transplants, say scientists at the University of Edinburgh.

The liver has an incredible natural ability to repair itself, but this can be lost in some injuries including severe drug overdoses. The therapy is a cancer drug that restores this regenerative potential. The work is at a very early stage, but the team say alternatives to transplant would have a huge impact on patients. Around 200 people in the UK have sudden life-threatening liver failure each year.

'I needed a new liver'

Student nurse Kara Watt, 21, needed a liver transplant two years ago. She was on placement at a care home when she started to feel sick and her face started to go yellow. Tests identified a problem with her liver function which continued to get worse. She ended up in intensive care in Edinburgh and was told she needed a new liver. It was "a horrible, horrible thing to hear", she said. It is people like Kara whom scientists hope their work will ultimately help.

Renewing regeneration

The team started by examining people's livers to see why they lose their ability to regenerate. They discovered severe injuries rapidly triggered a process called senescence throughout the liver. Senescence is when the body's cells become old, tired and stop working properly. It is part of ageing, but the researchers showed severe injuries were like "contagious old age" spreading through the organ.

The study, published in Science Translational Medicine, also found a chemical signal that seemed to be responsible. The researchers then turned to mice and an experimental cancer therapy that could block the signal. The animals were given a drug overdose that would normally lead to liver failure and death, but with the treatment they survived. The researchers plan to test the drug on patients soon in the hope it could reduce the need for liver transplants.
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A normal life?
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