Reversing cirrhosis

The advances in medical research are becoming astonishingly strange and small.

Man-made molecules reverse liver cirrhosis in rats.

Scientists in Japan have designed artificial molecules that when used with rats successfully reversed liver cirrhosis, a serious chronic disease in humans that until now can only be cured by transplants.
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In the journal Nature Biotechnology, the researchers said they designed molecules that can block collagen production by liver "stellate cells", which are also known to absorb vitamin A.

The scientists then loaded the molecules into carriers that were coated with vitamin A, which tricked the stellate cells into absorbing the molecules.

"By packaging the (molecules) in carriers coated with vitamin A, they tricked the stellate cells into letting in the inhibitor, which shut down collagen secretion," the researchers wrote.

Drugs to reverse in humans may be available in just a few years.