Model prediction and validation of an order mechanism controlling the spatio-temporal phenotype of early hepatocellular carcinoma

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 ...

One of the tasks of the healthy liver is to store fat. Yet, at some stage, too much fat makes the liver sick. One critical time point occurs when a healthy fatty liver becomes inflamed and progresses to steatohepatitis, or NASH. LiSyM-Pillar I will identify what events lead to this transition. Does it occur in all parts of the liver? Which molecules indicate that it is taking place? Can the degeneration be stopped or undone - and if so, how?

The model studies the influence of hepatocyte–sinusoid alignment (HSA), i.e. the orientation of the division plane such that daughter hepatocytes align with nearby sinusoids, on the shape of tumor nodules in liver lobules. It employs the structure of the model ‘Liver Regeneration from CCl4’ (https://seek.lisym.org/models/19).

Originally, Höhme et al. (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11538-017-0375-1) employed a center-based model. Here, the model is encoded in the standardized language MorpheusML. ...