Conatus Liver Cirrhosis and Portal Hypertension Animation

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Background on Liver Disease

The liver is the largest internal organ in the human body and its proper function is indispensable for many critical metabolic functions, including the regulation of lipid and sugar metabolism, the production of important proteins, including those involved in blood clotting, and purification of blood. There are over 100 described diseases of the liver, and because of its many functions, these can be highly debilitating and life-threatening unless effectively treated. Liver diseases can result from injury to the liver caused by a variety of insults, including hepatitis C virus (HCV), hepatitis B virus (HBV), obesity, chronic excessive alcohol use or autoimmune diseases. Regardless of the underlying cause of the disease, there are important similarities in the disease progression including increased inflammatory activity and excessive liver cell apoptosis, which if unresolved leads to fibrosis. Fibrosis, if allowed to progress, will lead to cirrhosis, or excessive scarring of the liver, and eventually reduced liver function. Some patients with liver cirrhosis have a partially functioning liver and may appear asymptomatic for long periods of time, which is referred to as compensated liver disease. Decompensated liver disease is when the liver is unable to perform its normal functions. Many people with active liver disease remain undiagnosed largely because liver disease patients are often asymptomatic for many years. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) estimates that 5.5 million Americans have chronic liver disease or cirrhosis, and liver disease is the twelfth leading cause of death in the United States. According to the European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL), 29 million Europeans have chronic liver disease, and liver disease represents approximately two percent of deaths annually. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reported that in United States in 2012, more than 6,000 liver transplants were performed and more than 10,000 patients were added to the transplant waiting list.

Liver disease is often first detected as hepatitis, which is defined as inflammation of the liver. Hepatitis is easily detected by a routine laboratory test to measure blood levels of the liver enzyme alanine aminotransferase (ALT). ALT is elevated in almost all early- to mid-stage liver diseases and represents an overall measure of liver inflammation and liver cell death. As liver disease progresses, fibrotic scar tissue will begin to replace healthy liver tissue and over time will reduce the liver's ability to function properly. A liver biopsy is used to diagnose fibrosis and determine how much liver scarring has developed. If fibrosis is allowed to progress, it will lead to cirrhosis. As liver cirrhosis becomes progressively worse, all aspects of liver function will dramatically decline, which causes some patients to suffer from acute-on-chronic liver failure (ACLF).

ACLF occurs in patients who are in relatively stable condition until an acute event sets off a rapid deterioration of liver function. The morbidity and mortality of the patient population with ACLF is high. If a patient survives the acute decompensating event, the patient may return to a stable state. Patients with liver cirrhosis (LC) suffer from continual disease progression, which may eventually lead them to require liver transplantation. Despite advances in liver transplantation, morbidity and mortality in the LC patient population remains high with some patients ineligible for a liver transplant and others unable to be matched with a suitable donor liver.

Patients who receive liver transplants as a result of HCV infection are at risk of residual HCV still being present in the patient's blood, which can immediately infect the new liver, thus increasing the risk of accelerated inflammation and fibrosis. Even after successful treatment with drugs designed to clear the HCV infection, fibrotic changes in the liver may persist for many years. Liver fibrosis is often evaluated using the standard Ishak Fibrosis Score, which stages the severity of fibrosis and/or cirrhosis. If emricasan demonstrates the ability to halt the progression of fibrosis or cirrhosis in the patient populations we are studying, we believe that this could serve as a basis to evaluate emricasan for additional indications in patients at earlier stages of liver fibrosis resulting from HCV, HBV, nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), chronic excessive alcohol use or autoimmune diseases.

The Role of Apoptosis, Necrosis and Inflammation in Liver Disease

The death of cells and resulting inflammation play an important role in the progression of many liver diseases. In general, cells can die by either of two major mechanisms, apoptosis, a form of programmed cell death, or necrosis, which is uncontrolled cell death caused by infection, toxins or trauma. Both of these mechanisms can produce a state of acute and/or chronic inflammation as shown below.

High levels of noxious stimuli can rapidly overwhelm the cell's natural protective mechanisms, leading to a rupture of the cell and subsequent release of its contents into the surrounding tissue. This process is known as necrosis and results in a highly pro-inflammatory response, further damaging the surrounding tissue. In contrast, the programmed cell death mechanism, termed apoptosis, is a highly controlled and tightly regulated process that involves the orderly condensation and dismantling of the cell leading to its subsequent rapid and specific removal from the surrounding tissue by specialized cells. However, under conditions of excessive stress as often observed in disease, the production of apoptotic cells outpaces the body's ability to effectively remove them from the surrounding tissue. This results in an accumulation of shed cell fragments known as apoptotic bodies, which are taken up by surrounding cells and can stimulate additional cell death. Disease-driven excessive apoptosis results in the development of scar tissue or fibrosis, which can lead to tissue destruction and eventually reduce the capacity of an organ to function normally.

Markers of Liver Cell Death

ALT is an enzyme that is produced in liver cells and is naturally found in the blood of healthy individuals. In liver disease, liver cells are damaged and as a consequence, ALT is released into the blood, increasing ALT levels above the normal range. Physicians routinely test blood levels of ALT to monitor the health of a patient's liver. ALT level is a clinically important biochemical marker of the severity of liver inflammation and ongoing liver disease. Elevated levels of ALT represent general markers of liver cell death and inflammation without regard to any specific mechanism. However, in later stage cirrhosis patients, ALT levels have been shown to not be elevated above the normal range. Aspartate aminotransferase (AST) is a second enzyme found in the blood that is produced in the liver and routinely measured by physicians along with ALT. As with ALT, AST is often elevated in liver disease and, like ALT, is considered an overall marker of liver inflammation. We have measured both ALT and AST levels in our clinical trials and have observed similar effects of emricasan on both enzymes. However, because ALT is considered more liver specific and the pattern of changes we have observed in AST levels has been similar to those seen in ALT levels, our discussion will focus primarily on ALT.


Another important marker of liver cell death is a protein fragment called caspase-cleaved Cytokeratin 18 (cCK18). During apoptosis, a key structural protein within the cell called Cytokeratin 18, or CK18, is specifically cleaved by caspases, which results in the release of cCK18 into the blood stream. cCK18 is easily detected in the blood with a commercially-available test and is a mechanism-specific biomarker of apoptosis and caspase activity. Unlike ALT, cCK18 is elevated in patients with advanced liver disease and cirrhosis. Importantly, cCK18 is also present in healthy subjects and multiple studies have demonstrated an approximate basal level in healthy subjects.

Numerous independent clinical trials and published studies have demonstrated the utility of cCK18 for detecting and gauging the severity of ongoing liver disease across a variety of disease etiologies. These studies have demonstrated correlations between disease and cCK18 levels in patients with ACLF, LC, portal hypertension (PH), HCV, NASH and various other liver disease indications. For example, it has been shown that in HCV patients, the severity of liver disease was correlated with cCK18 levels and apoptosis, such that the more severe the disease, the higher the serum level of cCK18. In ACLF patients, studies have shown that blood levels of cCK18 were higher in non-surviving patients than in patients that survived. In LC patients, studies have shown that cCK18 levels are elevated and correlate with liver inflammation and cholestasis. In POLT patients with recurrent HCV, it has been shown that cCK18 levels and apoptosis were significantly elevated in liver biopsies as determined by immunohistochemical analysis. We believe these studies demonstrate the relationship between elevated cCK18 levels and severity of liver disease and that cCK18 is a valid and important biomarker of excessive apoptosis in liver disease.


Additional Information about your liver and liver disease can be found at the links below:

American Liver Foundation

National Digestive Diseases Information Clearinghouse

Directory of Digestive Disease Organizations for Patients

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