Experimental Methods in Fatty Liver Disease Research

TOPICAL COLLECTIONS

Guest Editor

Naoto Nagata

Kanazawa University, Graduate School of Medical Sciences, Department of Cellular and Molecular Function Analysis

Dr. Naoto Nagata investigates the role of liver in systemic energy homeostasis and metabolic disease pathogenesis. He received his PhD in Pharmacy at Kanazawa University in 2007 and established a mouse model of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) with a high-fat and high-cholesterol diet. This work made him realize that hepatic insulin signaling plays a crucial role in the pathogenesis of metabolic diseases, including obesity, type 2 diabetes, and NAFLD. Dr. Nagata moved to the University of California, Davis for his post-doctoral fellowship with Dr. Fawaz Haj. He uncovered the metabolic roles of protein tyrosine phosphatase in the liver, one of the key regulators of hepatic insulin signaling. Dr. Nagata works as a Lecturer in the Department of Molecular Function Analysis at Kanazawa University to focus on how to overcome obesity and NAFLD using animal models.

Collection Overview

There is an unmet medical need for an effective pharmacotherapy for nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD)/nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). The molecular mechanism of NAFLD development is complex and still unclear since NAFLD is strongly associated with obesity and type 2 diabetes. Thus, further basic research is still required to find a novel therapeutic approach. The other challenging part is the histological assessment of NAFLD. Liver biopsy is the gold standard in staging and grading of NAFLD, but histologic scoring systems are semi-quantitative with large variations between pathologists.

This collection intends to gather a broad spectrum of techniques to evaluate hepatocellular ballooning, hepatic steatosis, inflammation, and fibrosis in human and animal models, which include noninvasive in vivo imaging, flow cytometry, microscopy, omics analysis, other biochemical approaches, and histological image analysis. The aim is to share useful research methods to promote a broader use, thereby improving the standard of NAFLD basic research.