Read the story: https://irp.nih.gov/chronic-plus-binge-a-better-model-of-alcohol-abuse
Bin Gao, M.D., Ph.D., is a Senior Investigator and Chief of the Laboratory of Liver Diseases at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Intramural Research Program (IRP), in the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). http://irp.nih.gov/pi/bin-gao
The mission of the Laboratory of Liver Diseases, established in 2009, is to investigate the immunological aspects and molecular pathogenesis of alcoholic liver disease (ALD), and to explore novel therapeutic targets for the treatment of this disorder. ALD is a major cause of chronic liver disease, leading to cirrhosis and liver cancer. The latest report from NIAAA shows that cirrhosis is the 12th leading cause of deaths in the United States with a total of 29,925 deaths in 2007, of which 48.1% were alcohol-related. The spectrum of ALD includes simple steatosis, alcoholic hepatitis, cirrhosis, and hepatocellular carcinoma. At present, there are no small animal models available for human alcoholic hepatitis (inflammation), cirrhosis, and alcoholic liver cancer. Thus, our laboratory has been actively using liver injury models induced by ethanol and other insults to investigate the immunologic mechanisms underlying alcoholic liver injury, to study the effect of inflammation on liver disease progression, and to explore novel therapeutic targets for the treatment of ALD. Currently, we are focusing on the roles of innate immune cells (eg. natural killer and natural killer T cells), cytokines (eg. interleukin-6, interleukin-22), and the Jak-STAT signaling pathways activated by these cytokines in liver injury, fibrosis, regeneration, progenitor/stem cell proliferation, and hepatocarcinogenesis.
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