Grant: CIHR Fellowship

People with obesity and type 2 diabetes are more prone to develop liver fibrosis. Liver fibrosis is one of the chronic liver diseases that collectively cause death to nearly 5000 Canadians every year. This disease develops from continuous liver injury which overpowers the strength of the liver to heal from normal injuries. Unfortunately, there is no approved treatment to successfully manage advanced liver fibrosis, except through surgery. The main obstacle to the development of a cure, is attributed to the multiple and complex causes of severe liver injuries that lead to liver fibrosis. This means that an effective therapy for liver fibrosis may have to combine multiple drugs that target the multiple causes of this disease. One promising approach is to harness the unique features of plant-based products because they contain several beneficial phytochemicals. Research in our lab on a herb called the Anisopus mannii (AME), led us to isolate certain compounds in this plant that may be effective for the treatment of liver fibrosis. AME is locally called the "diabetes killer" in Nigeria, because it is mostly used to traditionally control blood glucose levels and obesity. Studies on cultured cells and animals led us to discover how specific carotenoids and phenolic acids (which we named CaroPhen) in this herb improve diabetes and obesity by targeting key enzymes involved in glucose utilization, intestinal lipid uptake, and the clearance of hepatic fat accumulation. Interestingly, the addition of CaroPhen to special cells used to study liver fibrosis (called the LX2 cells), also suppresses the secretion of proteins that accumulate during liver fibrosis. With these promising results, our objective is to use animal models of liver fibrosis to investigate the potentials of CaroPhen to suppress the progression of liver fibrosis. This result will allow us to develop new therapies that may be beneficial for treating liver fibrosis which currently has no cure.