Currently, the best known cure for liver cirrhosis is an organ transplant. But in a mouse model, University of California, San Francisco researchers have found a way to transform the diseased cells that drive this progressive scarring into healthy cells. Postdoctoral scholar Milad Rezvani says a big question is whether this technique will prove to be clinically relevant and safe to treat damaged livers in humans.

"Liver cirrhosis is still a huge public health burden. Right now we have shown that we can turn this one cirrhosis causing cell type into normal liver cells that function. So the obvious question after a successful mouse in vivo study is, can we do this in human patients?"

The technique used a virus to shuttle the desirable genes into diseased cells, and also proved successful on plates of cirrhosis-causing human cells. Rezvani’s team is now working to refine this virus so it only targets the liver and avoids infecting other cells in the body.