PIPages
Labs

Ankita Srivastava

Thomas Jefferson University, PA·Physiology

The liver can regrow after severe injury. Even when much of its function is lost, the surviving cells multiply until the organ returns to its original size.

Fields

Physiology

Genetics

Medicine & Clinical Research

Topics

liver regeneration

alcohol

ethanol

Grants
1 known grant, through Jul 2027

What they work on

  1. Test whether chronic ethanol upsets the balance between metabolic adjustments and hepatocyte division after partial hepatectomy (PHx, surgical removal of part of the liver) in rats.
  2. Test whether linked cell-state changes across several liver cell types govern the response to ethanol differently in male and female rats.
  3. Determine whether normalizing early transcriptional regulatory events, the first gene-switching steps after injury, can restore hepatocyte division blocked by ethanol.
  4. Compare the rat findings across a spectrum of human alcohol-associated liver disease (ALD) to find shared mechanisms and possible intervention targets.

More about the research

Heavy drinking can derail this repair process. The team discovered that rats fed ethanol (drinking alcohol) over a long period suffered a health crisis after liver injury, but only the males did. Females were protected. This fits the team's earlier finding that females resist some types of alcohol-related injury. The project asks where, and how, alcohol interferes with the liver's recovery.

Why it matters

Chronic alcohol use damages the liver and disrupts its ability to repair itself. Pinpointing where alcohol interferes with regeneration, and why males appear more vulnerable, could reveal intervention targets for people with alcohol-associated liver disease. Checking the animal findings against human disease conditions helps identify which mechanisms are likely to apply to patients.

Known grants

From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.

Ethanol Effects on the Transcriptional Regulatory Network in Liver Regeneration

NIH · Sep 2009 – Jul 2027

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Establish whether chronic alcohol consumption disrupts 24-hour rhythms in liver mitochondrial energy production, including the activity of cytochrome c oxidase, the rate-limiting enzyme of respiration, in alcohol-fed mice.

Karuna Rasineni

University of Nebraska Medical Center, NE·Physiology

Determine how alcohol-induced ghrelin alters gut-liver communication through GLP-1, a gut hormone that regulates energy use, and whether ghrelin blocks GLP-1's effects on liver cell metabolism during alcohol-associated fatty liver.

Xiaoqin Wu

University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, TX·Microbiology & Immunology·Early-career

Characterize liver immune cell populations and cell death after Gao-binge alcohol feeding in Mlkl bone-marrow chimeric mice, using flow cytometry of isolated non-parenchymal liver cells.

The school

Thomas Jefferson University: 12 labs on PI Pages, $271M a year on research, 33 research doctorates a year.

More about Thomas Jefferson University

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