Liver Results
Liver project over time
Chronic liver disease is characterized by three stages: chronic liver inflammation, liver fibrosis and eventually liver cancer. An early, non-invasive diagnosis is necessary to halt progression, which can be mediated by changing diet and lifestyle together with medication or -worst case- by liver transplantation. The primary aim of the liver project consortium, consisting of experts of VIB, UZ Leuven, KU Leuven, UZ gent, UGent and UZ Antwerpen, was to provide better liver disease diagnosis in the different disease stages:
In total, the consortium collected (+-700) and analysed (>1000) patient samples at different disease stages. The unique setup with high-quality standard operating procedures for sample collection and analysis and a uniform, curated database and sample biobank system allows for easy re-use and data sharing in the future.
The consortium focused on validating their previously-developed blood-based biomarker to predict the risk of developing liver cancer. It was concluded that a negative test indicates a low risk, which would allow patients to lower their number of hospital visits.
Another goal was to identify a blood-based biomarker that can distinguish clinically relevant stages of early liver diseases. While this was proven to be difficult, genetic material from the different biopsies allowed to establish a reference library to distinguish diseased from healthy tissue based on the circulating tumor cells in the blood. The high-quality data collection and sample library could enhance biomarker discovery in the future.