First LiSyM PostDoc and PhD student retreat

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.

In one in five people with NAFLD, the functioning liver cells, the hepatocytes, are replaced by connective tissue. Eventually this fibrosis becomes irreversible. In this state the liver is like a ‘scar that never heals’. Through it, the liver loses many of its vital functions.
LiSyM-Pillar II wants to know more about which factors promote fibrosis and the conditions under which fibrosis becomes irreversible How can fibrosis be diagnosed as early as possible? Researchers in the pillar are also
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This comprises the whole LiSyM network

Disorders of the liver show up through changes in blood tests. These blood tests indicate markers for events taking place in the liver. Usually studies of liver tissue cannot be performed: as liver samples would need to be obtained through a liver biopsy, and this procedure is not without risk, therefore these samples are usually unavailable. Complex metabolism models based on existing and new scientific data can simulate changes in the liver caused by disease. They often reveal unknown relationships
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Dr. Ahmed Ghallab (TU University, Dortmund) deals with chronic liver damage caused by toxins. In addition, he investigates processes associated with cholestasis - when bile accumulates in the bile ducts. Ghallab has been able to explain basic mechanisms of acute cholestasis, using a method for intravital two-photon microscopy, which he developed.