Antagonizing Hepatitis

A paper published in Nature Medicine suggests that serotonin antagonists could be useful for accelerating the clearance of potentially any type of hepatitis infection and minimizing liver cell damage. The finding could open up new therapeutic areas for biotech and pharma companies with serotonin antagonists on the market or in late-stage development for neurological conditions. The challenge will be finding antagonists with specificities that make it possible to treat hepatitis without interfering with serotonin's other roles in the liver.

Researchers at the University Hospital Zurich showed that the release of endogenous platelet-derived vasoactive serotonin in the liver delayed the entry of activated virus-specific CD8⁺ T cells into the livers of wild-type mice infected with lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus (LCMV), a model of human hepatitis. Virus-specific T cells play a major role in attacking chronic hepatitis...