Characterization of liver macrophages (LMs) in human liver tissue sections

Liver Systems Medicine : striving to develop non-invasive methods for diagnosing and treating NAFLD by combining mathematical modeling and biological research. LiSyM, is a multidisciplinary research network, in which molecular and cell biologists, clinical researchers, pharmacologists and experts in mathematical modeling examine the liver in its entirety. LiSyM research focuses on the metabolic liver disease non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), which includes non-alcoholic steatohepatitis ...

Dr. Madlen Matz-Soja (University of Leipzig) investigates the importance of a control mechanism - the hedgehog signaling pathway - for fatty liver disease. She has shown that the signaling pathway directs how liver cells in NAFLD accumulate fat. Hedgehog also affects sex hormones in the liver. Therefore, Matz-Soya hopes to clarify why women and men suffer from cirrhosis and liver cancer with varying degrees of frequency.

Liver macrophages (LMs) play a central role in acute and chronic liver pathologies. In our study, we sought to gain further insight into the role of LMs in different liver pathologies and into their characteristics after isolation from liver tissue. Here we will characterize LMs in human liver tissue sections using immunohistochemistry and bioinformatic image analysis. We investigate liver tissues characterized by antiinflammatory LMs which show a homogeneous distribution and increased cell numbers ...

In this study, we investigated human LMs in tissue sections as well as isolated from human liver tissues which were characterized both in suspension and in adherent cultures to find out whether the inflammatory state of primary human LMs corresponds to patients and disease characteristics and whather it is possible to maintain the macrophage pattern in suspension as well as in adherent cultures with just a few limitations. (CCA: cholangiocarcinoma, CRLM: colorectal liver metastasis, FNH: focal ...