A promising advance for patients with Mash thanks to a collaboration between the Angers University Hospital and the Inventiva Biotech.
It is a small revolution that begins in the discreet but essential world of liver diseases. A team of researchers, including Professor Jérôme Boursier du CHU d’Angers, has just signed a remarkable publication in the prestigious Revue Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology. At the heart of the study: A series of new biomarkers capable of predicting, with impressive reliability, the effectiveness of Lanifibranor treatment in patients with Mash, an advanced form of hepatic steatosis.
But first, a word on the Mash. This disease, whose scientific name can give cold sweats (metabolic steatohepatitis), is an inflammation of the liver linked to the accumulation of fat, often silent but which can evolve towards cirrhosis or hepatic cancer. The treatment, until today, remained complex, for lack of good tools to find out if a drug would really work.
This is where the Lanifibranor comes in, a drug candidate developed by Inventiva, and especially the famous “biomarkers signatures” developed to predict that will best meet them.
“Our collaboration with Inventiva was decisive to meet the critical need for reliable non -invasive biomarkers in the Mash”, explains Professor Jérôme Boursier, head of the hepato-gastroenterology service at the Angers University Hospital. “The signatures identified in our analyzes have shown better performance than the scores currently available to predict the response to the Lanifibranor. »»
Concretely, these biomarkers are like indicators present in the blood, capable of announcing in advance if a patient will see an improvement in his liver under treatment. Three types of responses were targeted in the study: the disappearance of lesions with improvement in fibrosis, the disappearance of lesions alone, and the improvement of fibrosis alone. For each scenario, a cocktail of markers has been defined, combining data on inflammation, metabolism or even cell degradation.
And the results are stunning: the scores developed display very high prediction rates (Auroc greater than 0.80), which means a precision rarely affected in this area.
“We are optimistic about the development of robust robust composite biomarkers who could predict the response to treatment and therefore the identification of the patients most likely to respond”underlines Professor PR FACHIER, enthusiastic about making this innovation a future standard in precision medicine.
If the trials continue successfully, these signatures could change the lives of thousands of patients, by avoiding unnecessary treatments, invasive biopsies, and targeting the right people at the right time.
Once again, the Angers University Hospital and the Professor Professor confirm their driving role in the fight against liver disease. Good news for patients, and for the whole medical community.
