Liver Biology and Disease Pathogenesis
Hepatic disease prevalence has been steadily increasing during recent years, with more than 50 million people estimated to be living with chronic liver conditions worldwide.*While there are more than 100 diagnoses relating to the liver, the most common are non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, alcohol-associated liver disease, hepatitis C, cirrhosis, and primary liver cancer. There are currently limited therapeutic option available for patients affected by these disorders, as the scientific needs a better understanding of liver biology and pathophysiologic mechanisms to develop more advanced and innovative treatments.
Learning objectives:
1. Evaluate hepatic crisis as an emergent complication affecting sickle cell disease patient
2. Describe how Wnt/ß-catenin signaling alleviates cholestasis
3. Outline a novel mechanism of mitochondrial injury in alcoholic liver disease that involves prolyl isomerase PIN1
Speakers:
Tirthadipa Pradhan-Sundd, PhD
Assistant Professor of Medicine - Division of Hematology-Oncology
Pittsburgh Heart Lung and Blood Vascular Medicine Institute - University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine
Tirthadipa Pradhan-Sundd, PhD is an assistant professor at University of Pittsburgh school of Medicine. Her NIH K01 funded work is focussed on understanding the molecular mechanism of hepatic vasculopathy. Dipa will present her 2020 HCS career development award talk on "Molecular mechanism of sickle cell hepatic crisis" on October 21st at HCS webinar series.
Karis Kosar
Graduate Student
University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Cellular and Molecular Pathology Program
Karis’s dissertation work at the University of Pittsburgh represents a novel field of inquiry for the Cellular and Molecular Pathology Program, providing the opportunity to discover mechanisms behind hepatocyte to cholangiocyte differentiation and proliferation. This work could provide exciting information and potential treatments for patients with primary sclerosing cholangitis.
Karis's projects have ignited within her a deep passion for liver research. In the long term, she hopes her research will increase understanding of the mechanisms of liver and biliary regeneration in animal models to provide knowledge that can be utilized in the development of cholestatic liver disease therapies. Karis is always excited to present and discuss her research.
Lucia Barbier Torres, PhD
Scientist
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
Lucia received her doctorate at the University of the Basque Country, Spain, and joined the Lu Laboratory at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center as a postdoctoral scientist in 2017. During her PhD and postdoctoral training, her research has been focused on identifying new molecular mechanisms in liver diseases and progression to liver cancer. During these years, Lucia developed a strong interest in mitochondrial mechanisms in chronic liver diseases and is currently studying the role of the newly identified mitochondrial protein methionine adenosyltransferase alpha 1 (MATα1) in alcoholic liver disease.
Sofia de Oliveira, PhD
Assistant Professor
Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Departments of Developmental and Molecular Biology and Medicine/Hepatology
In addition to her work at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Sofia de Oliveira is part of the Marion Bessin Liver Research Center and the Einstein-Mount Sinai Diabetes Center.
After finishing her graduate work in Spain and Portugal, Dr. de Oliveira moved to the US and joined Dr. Anna Huttenlocher’s lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to develop her postdoctoral studies. Here, she started to develop her own independent research on inflammation and liver disease and won two highly prestigious postdoctoral fellowships —the EMBO long-term fellowship to study the role of the innate immune system on NAFLD-HCC in 2015, and the CRI/FCF postdoctoral fellowship for researching FLC progression in 2016.
Throughout her career, Dr. de Oliveira has been using the zebrafish model, a well-established vertebrate system, to overcome major limitations in the fields of inflammation and liver disease. These areas of study lack good animal models amenable to large-scale, non-invasive live imaging of immune responses and cell-cell interactions in a whole animal context.
Dr. de Oliveira’s research at Einstein is focused on understanding how immune metabolic dysregulation promoted by diet impacts innate immune cells, inflammation, and disease progression. Her current projects are investigating how immune metabolic dysregulation in neutrophils and macrophages alters inflammatory response in the context of both liver diseases and response to different inflammatory triggers (e.g., infections or tissue damage). Sofia received her BsMs at University of Coimbra (Coimbra, Portugal) and PhD at University of Lisbon (Lisbon, Portugal).