UF researchers studying ways to lessen liver damage have received a grant of nearly $1.3 million from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Disease.
The research team hopes to confirm that the liver’s ability to recover from ischemia/reperfusion injury — the damage from a lack of oxygen and nutrients — is associated with the process by which cells remove damaged mitochondria.
The research is headed by principal investigators Christiaan Leeuwenburgh, chief of the biology of aging division in the department of aging and geriatric research, and Jae-Sung Kim, assistant professor of surgery in the UF College of Medicine.
Kim and his research team disproved a previous study that found the autophagy process damages the liver during the aging process and there was no way to use older livers.
The team has also been studying the link between impaired autophagy with diseases such as cancer and neurological disorders. Liver transplants can be very dangerous, especially on older individuals with cancer, Kim said.
Only about 30 percent of individuals on the liver transplant list receive a donor organ, Kim said. He hopes to expand the donor pool by including older individuals.
“Our team has found that even though a senior person has cancer, there is now a potential way to safely perform the operation to expand their life and quality of life,” he said.
