The Human Touch: How Liver-on-a-Chip Addresses the Unmet Needs of Liver Disease Research

Non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) is a highly prevalent disease, currently unmet therapeutically. NASH is characterized by fat accumulation in the liver leading to chronic fibrosis and inflammation, which can progress to cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma.

Its progression is associated with fatty diets, dysregulation of metabolism and genetic predisposition. Several genes linked to NASH development are associated with lipid droplets, including HSD17B13 which encodes a metabolic enzyme in the lipid droplet membrane.

CN Bio’s liver-on-a-chip, cultured under a high fat stress, provides a human-relevant NASH model for characterizing drugs targeting metabolism. In this webinar, we highlight how the liver-on-a-chip system can be used to assess the impact of HSD17B13 inhibitors on fibrosis, human metabolism and lipid droplets.

• Liver disease progresses from a dysregulation of metabolism
• Lipid metabolism differs between mice and men and the impact this has on drug development
• Primary human NASH models can evaluate drugs that target metabolism
• NASH models allow the quantitation of lipid droplets, metabolism and fibrosis