Peter MacCallum team discovers how the liver repairs itself

Six million Australians suffer from chronic liver disease, but a new tool could make reversing the damage easier for those with the chronic disease.

Reversing liver failure is a step closer after Peter Mac researchers discovered how the organ regrows after injury.

Six million people in Australia suffer from chronic liver disease, 7000 die every year.

On Friday the Melbourne team, led by Associate Professor Andrew Cox and Professor Mark Dawson from the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, said they had uncovered how the unique phenomenon of regeneration is triggered in the liver.

“The liver is one of the only tissues capable of regeneration, yet we don’t know the cues that trigger the regenerative process,” Assoc Prof Cox said.

“We worked with the Dawson Lab at Peter Mac to develop a new tool that allows us to trace the genes that cause the liver to regenerate.”

Professor Mark Dawson leads the Dawson Lab at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre. Image: Supplied.

In the journal Developmental Cell, the team says the discovery offers the potential to reverse liver failure.

“We found that activation of this specific pathway changes the metabolism of cells in the liver,” Assoc Prof Cox said.

“Liver injury awakens the liver cells and they adapt by proliferating to recover the lost tissue.

“We identified that a factor known as Nrf2 reprograms liver cell metabolism to provide the fuel needed for regrowth.”

Importantly, the researchers say, there are already drugs that activate this pathway in clinical trials, so there is the potential for them to be repurposed to activate the liver cells to regenerate.

“We have known for a long time that the liver has this amazing capacity to repair itself without scarring, unlike other tissues including the heart,” Assoc Prof Cox said.

“The major innovation of our study was to develop a new tool that enabled us to examine gene expression at a resolution that we couldn’t previously.”

The Melbourne team was led by Associate Professor Andrew Cox and Professor Mark Dawson from the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne. Image: NCA NewsWire.

Called SLAM-ITseq, it helped the team understand what genes were expressed during regeneration and allowed them to “trace” its pathway in an animal model they created.

“It is a very cool tool and we are excited about how it can be deployed in other diseases such as cancer,” Assoc Prof Cox said.

Why the liver has evolved this unique ability to “mend itself” remains unclear, but Assoc Prof Cox says it is possible it relates to its major function which is to detoxify the blood.

“Some scientists speculate that the liver’s unique capacity to regenerate may have evolved as a strategy to cope with toxin exposure during normal liver function” he said.

The Peter Mac team says they have laid the groundwork for future studies. Image: Supplied.

Assoc Prof Cox said this was a fundamental research project driven by a fantastic collaboration between laboratories.

“We have identified the triggers that lead to regeneration, and this now lays the groundwork for future studies where individuals more inclined to do preclinical and clinical trials can take advantage of the understanding our paper has provided.”