Maryam Jamil - What’s Tipping the Scale: Sex Differences in Liver Fibrosis: VCU 3MT Competition

<div><div><div>5th Annual VCU 3MT® Competition, held on October 18-19, 2019.<br><a target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" href="https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/threemt/10">https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/threemt/10</a><br><br>Transcription:<br>I see quite a few women in the audience, well I have some good news for you. It’s great to be a woman, you have a lower risk of developing autism, addiction, Schizophrenia, and now adding to this list liver damage. Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD) is the most common liver disorder with an estimated economic impact of $292 billion in United States alone. Fibrosis is the first stage of liver damage and hence can be targeted for therapeutics. Interestingly pre-menopausal women are protected from fibrosis but the exact cause for this is not known. Our lab specializes in studying lipids which are the compounds used for energy storage, signaling, and they also form structures of our cellular membranes. A lipid in which we are particularly interested is named Sphingosine 1 phosphate or S1P, it has been known to be a critical regulator of many important physiological functions including cancer, diabetes, and fibrosis. It also has a reputation of being the bad guy or a villain as it promotes fibrosis in multiple organs, therefore our lab created a mouse model in which liver cells were unable to produce this lipid. The reasoning behind this was simple that by removing this villain we can get rid of fibrosis and that is exactly what we saw in male mice which were protected from high fat diet induced fibrosis, but to our surprise female mice which are usually protected had severe liver damage. It is something that has not been seen before. Upon further investigation we observed that a female sex hormone known as estrogen promotes S1P which in turn protects livers from damage. This study reveals two important things 1) The notorious bad guy named S1P has in fact been the knight and shining armor for women all along. 2) One organ’s villain is another organ’s hero, S1P which has been shown to cause fibrosis in other organs has an opposite role in liver. Therefore, by keeping these two points in mind we can now use this knowledge to develop therapies specifically targeted towards liver damage and we can finally balance out this tipping scale.<br></div></div></div>