Derek Mann, Professor of Hepatology
Fibrosis, or scarring, caused by injury or disease, can occur in any organ of the body. The scarring is often just a temporary repair mechanism, but as people get older many develop an impaired ability to regenerate tissue in damaged organs to replace scars.
Newcastle University’s Professor of Hepatology, Derek Mann, leads a team studying this process in organs such as the liver, heart and kidneys.
Scarring is created by a mixture of proteins secreted by wound healing cells, he explains. It occurs in all of us in some form and is an underlying factor in 45% of fatal diseases.
The liver is a highly regenerative organ. Remove half in an operation and this will grow back within days. But if significant scarring occurs as a result of a disease like Hepatitis C, the liver’s function could deteriorate.
Counteracting the fibrotic process
"If you can find ways of promoting regeneration when it is diminished, as in an older person, then you will be able to counteract the fibrotic process," he says.
Clinical trials in Newcastle, facilitated by the University’s partnership with the Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, are studying the role of drugs such as blood pressure pills that can inhibit scarring. A difficulty, however, is detecting in which patients fibrosis is occurring.
Research breakthroughs
While fibrosis research is a worldwide effort, the Newcastle team has been making a potentially important breakthrough.
"We have been asking the question: Why is it that some people develop fibrosis and others don’t?" says Professor Mann. "And we have formulated a hypothesis that it may be influenced not only by your lifestyle but also by that of your parents and grandparents.
"We have developed research to show that is the case. And we know, at the molecular level, what is perhaps responsible for transmitting this susceptibility from one generation to another."
Read more about understanding the science of ageing.
