Research Group Achim Weber

Keywords

Pathology, Liver Cancer, Cell Death

Summary & Mission statement

Our group studyies pathology-relevant topics of liver and intestinal cancer. Trying to better understand the underlying mechanisms and their implication for pathology, we aim to improve diagnostics and the management of patients with liver and intestinal tumors.

Overview

We study basic mechanisms of liver and intestinal carcinogenesis by taking advantage of mouse models and correlative studies inhuman tissues. A major interest isthe phenomenon of apoptosis-driven carcinogenesis (Weber et al., 2010, Hepatology). We contributed to the concept of understanding tumorigenesis as a result of persistent apoptotic cell death and regeneration. The significance of theses hallmarks was demonstrated in mouse models and patients` tissue sampleswith chronic liver diseases whichetiology-independently display chronically elevated hepatocyteapoptosis and regeneration(Boege et al., 2017, Cancer Cell).Further projects aim to unravelthe cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying epidemically increasingmetabolic disorders of the liver, i.e. non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), and NASH-driven HCC(Wolf et al., 2014, Cancer Cell).Moreover, westudy thecomparability and applicability of murine tumor models to human liver tumors with special interest in HCC intratumor heterogeneity and its implications for tumor classification approaches and molecular targeted therapy (Friemel et al., 2015, Clinical Cancer Research). Finally, we try to translate our findings into routine pathology diagnostics aiming to improve pathology diagnostics, and thus, patient management (Lenggenhager et al. 2017, J Hepatol).