What we do …
Chronic liver diseases, including liver steatosis, cirrhosis and cancer, affect millions of human beings and are leading causes of death and liver transplantation worldwide. They are therefore grave public health problems and consequently a field of considerable pharmaceutical interest. Worryingly, the incidence of liver disease is dramatically rising due to the global epidemics of obesity/overweight that has become a major socioeconomic challenge, affecting both adults and children.
In our group, we aim to dissect the mechanisms underpinning chronic liver disease and cancer and the link obesity-liver disease, with a particular interests in unraveling how dysregulated posttranscriptional reprogramming (leading to aberrant protein expression) facilitates disease progression and aggravation. The ultimate goal is to identify novel therapeutic targets that help design new and more effective treatments. We use a combination of mouse models and cell-based models (human and mouse), knockout mice, high-throughput genomic approaches, and basic molecular and cellular biology.
We are currently interested in studying the following questions:
- What intrinsic (cell autonomous) mechanisms regulate the function of liver cells and their interplay with the local microenvironment or niche, and how are they deregulated during steatosis, cirrhosis and liver cancer?
- Which is the role of CPEB proteins in the posttranscriptional reprogramming of gene expression during chronic liver disease?
- What is the significance and underlying mechanisms linking obesity with chronic liver disease?
- How does deregulation of pathways that control angiogenesis contribute to progression of liver disease?