Speaker

The aim of the Schwabe lab is to understand the regulation of wound healing responses to chronic liver injury with a specific focus on how the activation of hepatic stellate cells promotes liver fibrosis and liver carcinogenesis. We postulate that many pathways that promote beneficial wound healing responses in the short term, promote the development of fibrosis and cancer in the long term. Generation of novel mouse models of liver fibrosis, inflammation and cancer: The Schwabe lab is using Bac recombineering technology to generate a number of novel genetic models of liver fibrosis, inflammation and hepatocellular cancer. The approaches includes the (i) generation of novel Cre transgenic lines, (ii) floxing of target genes and (iii) the generation of "knock-in" mice with point mutations in specific pathways.