Liver transplants associated with alcohol-related disease are growing at a rapid pace, shifting research to address pathologies behind the ailments in light of a limited supply of organ donors. At the forefront is Mengwei Zang, MD, PhD, an internationally recognized leader in chronic liver disease research at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UT Health San Antonio) who was just awarded a groundbreaking five-year, $2.53 million grant from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, part of the National Institutes of Health.
Zang, professor at the university's Sam and Ann Barshop Institute for Longevity and Aging Studies and the Department of Molecular Medicine at the Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long School of Medicine, will use the funding to develop innovative approaches to investigate the pathological mechanisms underlying alcohol-associated liver disease. The research represents a scientific frontier in the study of alcoholic liver disease, proposing abnormalities in RNA splicing as a new causative factor.
It could result in new treatments to forestall or reduce the need for transplants. "Early transplantation for alcohol-associated liver disease is currently the fastest-growing reason for liver transplants," Zang said, "highlighting the real urgent need to study the mechanisms driving the pathogenesis of alcohol-induced liver damage." Alcohol-associated liver disease accounts for half of liver disease-related deaths, and its rates are r.
