Liver Diseases Research Revitalized
On the ninth floor of the Clinical Center, a reconstituted NIDDK liver diseases section is emerging. Among the newly opened boxes of supplies and equipment are new researchers, innovative techniques and novel ideas shaping a fresh approach to liver research.
Dr. T. Jake Liang
"We're translating what we've learned from the bench to the bedside," said new section chief Dr. T. Jake Liang, a gastroenterologist/hepatologist recruited from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Harvard Medical School. He in turn has recruited scientists from MGH, University of California at Los Angeles, Tulane University, NCI, and other countries to build a bridge between clinical and basic liver research.
The laboratory is fully renovated. There's a new tissue culture room where eight incubators grow cell cultures, and there's new imaging equipment. "We're using innovative technology to understand how hepatitis viruses cause disease and to develop novel antiviral treatments," said Liang.
Dr. Jay Hoofnagle, director of NIDDK's Division of Digestive Diseases and a long-time clinical researcher in the section, noted that chronic hepatitis affects 3 million to 4 million Americans and is a major cause of cirrhosis and liver cancer. "Jake studies how the viruses grow, what makes them replicate, and what controls their activity and how much they replicate. That's a clue to what causes the liver injury in chronic hepatitis."
Hepatitis C is the most common form of chronic viral hepatitis in the United States. The new research team is studying the molecular events that occur when it replicates in infected individuals. They are also treating patients with alpha interferon, an antiviral agent that causes remission in 10-20 percent of people, and with other experimental drugs that are promising in the treatment of hepatitis B and C.
Liang's commitment to hepatitis began as a child in China where he, his aunt and his brother had hepatitis. "I didn't know science or medicine," he recalls, "but that's always been in the back of my mind. It's become part of my life to work on it." He emigrated from China to the U.S. as a teenager and went on to attend Harvard College and Harvard Medical School.
Also on his mind is liver cancer, a major complication of chronic hepatitis. As serendipity, he found that when a tyrosine kinase named met, a protein involved in liver growth, is expressed in transgenic mice, breast cancer develops. Now he wants to learn how regulation of liver growth by met is linked to cancer.
"To me your liver is the center of the universe," says Liang. "It is the single organ that carries on the most body functions."
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