BioCentury
ARTICLE | Tools & Techniques

Targeting fibrosis

October 2, 2006 7:00 AM UTC

Haptogen Ltd. was expected to announce on Monday this week that it has preclinical proof of principle for an antibody that can be used both to image early stage liver damage in vivo, and to treat it. If it works, it would solve a long-standing problem in the diagnosis and prevention of liver disease.

Liver disease starts with fibrosis, which is reversible and can be treated if it is detected. But the disease often goes undiagnosed because biomarkers can neither determine the precise stage of disease, nor indicate the site of fibrosis, according to Fiona Adair, CBO at Haptogen (Aberdeen, Scotland). Biopsies yield more precise information about the stage of disease, but they are invasive and yield data only about the area of the liver from which the biopsy was taken. ...