The Medicine by Design Global Speaker Series invites established and emerging international leaders in regenerative medicine to engage with our extraordinary community of researchers and clinicians. 
Medicine by Design, in partnership with the McEwen Stem Cell Institute and the Ontario Institute for Regenerative Medicine, is pleased to welcome Stuart Forbes, MB, ChB, director of the Centre for Regenerative Medicine and professor of transplantation and regenerative medicine at the University of Edinburgh, and consultant hepatologist at the Scottish Liver Transplant Unit. He will give a talk titled, “Developing regenerative therapies for the damaged liver.”
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- The event will be livestreamed (link will be live shortly before event)
Talk Abstract
The normal liver regenerates well after injury but in severe or chronic damage the regeneration capability begins to fail and cellular senescence develops. We have studied human liver injury and regeneration to develop mouse models that develop epithelial senescence and model human disease. This has revealed plasticity between the biliary and hepatocyte population. The epithelial senescence also drives liver pathology such as fibrosis and can be targeted using small molecule approaches.
Based upon our studies of liver injury and regeneration we have been developing cell therapies for liver disease including macrophage cell therapy for liver cirrhosis which is now in phase 2.
Biography
Stuart Forbes is Professor of Transplantation and Regenerative Medicine, at the University of Edinburgh and the Scottish Liver Transplant Unit. His research focuses on how the chronically damaged liver regenerates and how these mechanisms process becomes deranged in liver and bile duct cancer. Prof. Forbes is Director of the MRC Centre for Regenerative Medicine, University of Edinburgh which houses 230+ scientists and clinicians. He is Director of the UK wide UKRMP Hub for engineering and exploiting the stem cell niche which aims to exploit the biology of stem cell niches for translational benefit. Prof. Forbes is a consultant Hepatologist at the Scottish Liver Transplant Unit, Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh and has clinical interests in liver failure, cancer and transplantation and is running phase 1 and 2 trials of macrophage cell therapy for liver cirrhosis.