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GALAXY: Gut-and-liver axis in alcoholic liver fibrosis

Exploring the role of the gut microbiome in alcoholic liver fibrosis to improve understanding, diagnosis, prevention and treatment of chronic liver disease.

illustration before and after GALAXY

GALAXY investigates the gut-liver axis to better understand alcoholic liver fibrosis and ultimately, deliver novel biomarkers and treatments for alcoholic liver desease.

About the project

GALAXY has the ambition, by combining unique capabilities in European institutions, to perform integrated systems modelling of multi-omics data together with clinical data. To improve understanding of alcoholic liver fibrosis, and to develop diagnostic, prevention and treatment programs.

Concept and approach

  1. The hypothesis of GALAXY is that specific gut microbiome characteristics and associated host gene expression and metabolic changes in alcohol overusing individuals are key determinants for the development and progression of alcoholic liver fibrosis.
  2. These key determinants can be used to develop novel biomarkers to detect alcoholic liver fibrosis before advancing into cirrhosis and stratify patients for risk of disease progression.
  3. Understanding disease complexity will, in addition to early detection, also be used to develop new treatments to halt liver fibrosis by altering the microbiome.
  4. We propose that alcoholic liver fibrosis through a systems medicine approach of well-phenotyped cohorts can be better understood, detected at an earlier stage and disease progression stopped.

Work package 7: Socio-economic evaluations

WP leader Hans Olav Melberg

The main objective of this work package is to provide information on economic costs and benefits, which is relevant to decisions about how to commercialise the diagnostic assay, the system medicine tools and the treatments.

The end result will be an analysis allowing decision makers to compare overall social gains relative to cost for interventions against liver fibrosis/cirrhosis. Such an analysis is an essential prerequisite for commercialisation since a favourable ratio of gains to costs would justify further investments by both the private and the public sector.

Financing

  • EU

Cooperation

  • University of Southern Denmark
  • Biomedical Research Foundation Academy of Athens
  • University of Bonn
  • European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL)
  • Nordic Bioscience (NB)
  • Nordisk Rebalance (NR)
  • Odense University Hospital (OUH)
  • Steno Diabetes Centre

Start - finish

2016 - 2022

Published Oct. 10, 2016 11:10 AM - Last modified Jan. 31, 2017 2:14 PM