We wish you a Happy and Prosperous New Year!

If you are currently planning to begin a project this year, we would love to support you in any way we can, including conducting one of our high quality pharmacology studies.

 

 

Today, we would like to share with you a little bit about the relationship between liver cancer and non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH).

 

Changing global epidemiology of liver cancer from 2010 to 2019: NASH is the fastest growing cause of liver cancer

(Huang et al., Cell Metab. 2022)

In the above paper, it was reported that there has been a rapid increase in global deaths due to liver cancer that developed from NASH.

 

Interestingly, this paper shows that between 2010 and 2019, the number of liver cancer deaths due to hepatitis B and hepatitis C, which account for the majority of cancer patients, decreased, while the number of liver cancer deaths due to NASH increased rapidly.

 

While viral hepatitis is the main cause of liver cancer, it is expected that the number of viral hepatitis related cases can be decreased via vaccination in the near future (Chang, et al. Gastroenterology. 2016).

On the other hand, the current number of patients with NASH is increasing, and with it the number of patients with NASH-induced liver cancer is also expected to rise (Estes, et al. Hepatology. 2018; Llovet et al., Nat Rev Dis Primers. 2021). Unfortunately, there is currently no way to prevent or treat NASH based liver cancer.

Therefore, it is of the utmost importance that basic research be conducted to discover a treatment that can reduce the incident rate of NASH derived liver cancer.

 

 

That is why we believe our proprietary STAM™ model, the world's first NASH-liver cancer model that spontaneously develops liver cancer, is an extremely relevant model in today's struggle to develop a cure.

In this model, tumors begin to develop starting at 16 weeks of age, and by 20 weeks of age, 100% of all mice will have liver cancer.

 

Our STAM™ model has been used in over 30 different HCC targeting studies, both therapeutic and preventive, and has been featured in more than 15 publications and presentations.

In one of these studies, our client conducted a therapeutic HCC targeting study using the STAM™ model and reported that their compound exhibited an anti-cancerous effect (Okrah et al. NPJ Precision Oncology, 2018).

 

Would you like to use the STAM™ model to test the efficacy of your compound on liver cancer?

If you are, please do not hesitate to reach out!