Abstract
Fibrosis is the excessive accumulation of extracellular matrix components due to chronic injury, with collagens as predominant structural components. Liver fibrosis can progress to cirrhosis, which is characterized by a severe distortion of the delicate hepatic vascular architecture, the shunting of the blood supply away from hepatocytes and the resultant functional liver failure. Cirrhosis is associated with a highly increased morbidity and mortality and represents the major hard endpoint in clinical studies of chronic liver diseases. Moreover, cirrhosis is a strong cofactor of primary liver cancer. In vivo models are indispensable tools to study the cellular and molecular mechanisms of liver fibrosis and to develop specific antifibrotic therapies towards clinical translation. Here, we provide a detailed description of select optimized mouse models of liver fibrosis and state-of-the-art fibrosis readouts.
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Acknowledgments
This work was supported by NIH U19 AI066313-04 Hepatitis C Cooperative Research Centers, EU ERC Advanced Grant titled “Quantitative Imaging of Liver Fibrosis and Fibrogenesis,” and a grant within the EU Project “European Study of Steatohepatitis” to DS.
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Kim, Y.O., Popov, Y., Schuppan, D. (2017). Optimized Mouse Models for Liver Fibrosis. In: Clausen, B., Laman, J. (eds) Inflammation. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 1559. Humana Press, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-6786-5_19
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-6786-5_19
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