BioCentury
ARTICLE | Targets & Mechanisms

Balancing act in liver fibrosis

December 19, 2013 8:00 AM UTC

CXCR7, one of the few chemokine receptors against which there are virtually no drug development efforts, may be a novel target for liver fibrosis, according to new findings from a U.S. team.1 The results also pointed to the well-trodden family member CXCR4 in the indication, and the next steps are to figure out whether to deliver systemic or liver-specific modulators of the targets.

Liver fibrosis is the result of aberrant healing processes in response to acute or chronic liver injury. Although liver endothelial cells are capable of triggering liver regeneration following acute injury,2-4 chronic injury can overactivate endothelial cells, thereby promoting fibrosis instead of regeneration for reasons that are poorly understood...