Therapeutic targeting of AREL1 in hepatic stellate cells attenuates MASH-related liver fibrosis
Yang-Wen-Qing Zhang, Xiaoyu Pan, Minghe Zhang, Junyu Zhang, Hui Ren, Xinyu Zong, Xiaomian Li, Kequan Xu, Peng Xia, Tiangen Wu, Weijie Ma, Xi Chen, Chengming Qu, Wenzhi He, Yufeng Yuan · 2026
Read Therapeutic targeting of AREL1 in hepatic stellate cells attenuates MASH-related liver fibrosis by Yang-Wen-Qing Zhang, Xiaoyu Pan, Minghe Zhang, Junyu Zhang, Hui Ren, Xinyu Zong, Xiaomian Li, Kequan Xu, Peng Xia, Tiangen Wu, Weijie Ma, Xi Chen, Chengming Qu, Wenzhi He, Yufeng Yuan (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13438774.txt.
Description
Yang-Wen-Qing Zhang and colleagues found a gene fat-driven liver scarring switches on in the very cells laying the scar down. Metabolic steatohepatitis, the inflamed stage of fatty liver disease, now drives most liver fibrosis. Mining single-cell datasets from human livers, their 2026 study spotted a distinct stellate subgroup marked by a gene called AREL1, raised only in this disease.
AREL1 then partners with a protein called ILK to fire a growth pathway, pushing the cells into scar mode. Mice engineered to lack the gene in stellate cells developed far less fibrosis on a disease diet. The team went therapeutic: vitamin A-guided nanoparticles, which naturally home to stellate cells, delivered gene-silencing cargo easing scarring in sick mice. The authors present AREL1 as a fresh, druggable address. The study hands drug hunters a mechanism and a delivery route.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Yang-Wen-Qing Zhang, Xiaoyu Pan, Minghe Zhang, Junyu Zhang, Hui Ren, Xinyu Zong, Xiaomian Li, Kequan Xu, Peng Xia, Tiangen Wu, Weijie Ma, Xi Chen, Chengming Qu, Wenzhi He, Yufeng Yuan |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 98457 |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |