Sekisui XenoTech now offers human liver tissue microarrays and a microsomal pool for studying and developing new treatments for fatty liver disease (FLD). The microsomes and arrays feature non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) and other liver tissue from the company’s Research Biobank. The initiative is part of Sekisui XenoTech’s ongoing commitment to furthering knowledge of hepatic disease.
“Fatty liver disease is a highly pervasive condition that has a very significant impact on the health of modern society. We are supporting hepatology researchers with these collections of high-quality human tissues to advance basic knowledge of FLD and to develop new treatments for the illness,” said Maciej Czerwinski, Ph.D., Sekisui XenoTech Director of Consulting. Dr. Czerwinski led the effort to establish the company’s Research Biobank and developed the microarrays.
Tissue microarrays are tools for the analysis of disease biomarkers in well-defined patient populations. Sekisui XenoTech offers tissue arrays focused on NASH, steatohepatitis with a history of alcohol use, and steatosis both without and with history of alcohol use. The placement of targeted disease tissues and appropriate controls from numerous donors in the same arrays facilitates comparative analysis, e.g. in biomarker research. Relevant donor data, including body mass index (BMI) and macrovesicular fat content, accompany the arrays. The arrays were manufactured by Reveal Biosciences, a computational pathology company offering histopathology, in situ hybridization, immunohistochemistry and quantitative image analysis.
Similarly, the new pool of microsomes was prepared from several donors diagnosed with NASH. Human liver microsomes are commonly used to support in vitro ADME (Absorption, Distribution, Metabolism and Excretion) studies because of the representative composition of hepatic drug metabolizing enzymes. The newly developed NASH pool is most suitable for the analysis of human drug metabolism in well-characterized disease samples.