GRANT. Professor Stefano Romeo receives the equivalent of almost SEK 16 million from the Novo Nordisk Foundation. The project may lead to the first effective treatment of fatty liver, where the disease is not caused by alcohol intake.
This is the Novo Nordisk Foundation’s Distinguish Investigator grant in Endocrinology, which will fund Stefano Romeo’s research for the next five years.
A prolonged excess in sugar and fat intake will damage the liver, similarly to a prolonged alcohol intake, and became rich in lipids, a condition known as Steatotic Liver Disease (SLD).
“A positive energy balance is a prominent risk factor for SLD. Most people suffering from obesity have SLD, but there is also a significant proportion who seem to have natural protection against developing this disease. Indeed, as many as one in four or one in five people with obesity do not have a fatty liver. Here, we want to find out the molecular mechanisms underlying this protection, with the hope of developing the therapeutics targeting SLD,” says Stefano Romeo.
On the lookout for protective factors
The research team is studying cohorts of people with obesity, and biobank samples of their liver and visceral fat tissue. The results will be translated in cultured mini-livers, called organoids, and to some extent also in mice.
“The first step will be to map the genetic and lipid signature of liver fat to see differences between those who develop fatty liver and those who do not. We then want to identify genes that are important for the liver’s protection against the disease and investigate whether we can reduce the storage of lipids in the liver by targeting these genes,” says Stefano Romeo.
He notes that the research methods are challenging:
“We will use several different modern omics techniques, which means we are likely to see many genetic and lipid associations. The challenge is to prove causality and show that we have found the mechanism that either causes or protects against the disease.”
The research is conducted in collaboration with colleagues in several other countries: Finland, France, and Italy.
Stefano Romeo is a professor of molecular and clinical medicine at the Department of Medicine, which he combines with a position as a chief physician in endocrinology at Sahlgrenska University Hospital. He is also associated with the Magna Graecia University in Catanzaro, Italy. He previously worked as a researcher at Cambridge in the UK and at UT Southwestern in Dallas, USA. He has been based in Gothenburg since 2009.
BY: ELIN LINDSTRÖM
PHOTO: JOHAN WINGBORG
