Gorrell Laboratory
We focus on understanding the roles of a key enzyme family in progressive liver damage and cancer.
Our discoveries indicate that the four enzymes of the DPP4 family are drivers of liver disease towards liver failure and cancer. Fortunately, enzymes make excellent drug targets and one of the enzymes, named DPP4, is the target of a successful diabetes drug class that our research helped create.
We are working towards understanding what makes chronic liver diseases wax and wane, and are learning about the components of tumours that support the cancer cells, called the tumour microenvironment. This work is directed towards discovering new treatment options, and showing the value of our new test for liver fibrosis.
- Fatty liver disease
- Liver cancer
- Liver fibrosis
- Protease enzymes
- Protein biochemistry
- Liver disease models
- Pathogenesis
- Protease substrate discovery
- Development and validation of a novel circulating fibroblast activation protein – based predictive model to improve fibrosis risk stratification in metabolic liver disease population
- Dipeptidyl Peptidase Inhibition Enhances CD8 T Cell Recruitment and Activates Intrahepatic Inflammasome in a Murine Model of Hepatocellular Carcinoma
- DPP4 Inhibitor Sitagliptin Enhances Lymphocyte Recruitment and Prolongs Survival in a Syngeneic Ovarian Cancer Mouse Model
- DPP9 deficiency: An inflammasomopathy that can be rescued by lowering NLRP1/IL-1 signaling
- Fibroblast activation protein: A cell surface dipeptidyl peptidase and gelatinase expressed by stellate cells at the tissue remodelling interface in human cirrhosis
People
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Professor Mark Gorrell
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Dr Bobby Boumelhem
Postdoc Research Officer -
Jasmine Minh Hang Nguyen
PhD student -
Mingchang Zhang
PhD student -
JiaLi Carrie Huang
Postdoc Research Officer -
Amy Yiqun Qu
PhD student -
Ziqi Vincent Wang
PhD student
Student opportunities
We primarily seek to develop the research skills of our students. We use diverse techniques to study roles of enzymes, so students learn one or more according to their needs and interests. The primary supervisor of future students is Dr Bobby Boumelhem, whose primary expertise is cell biology and microscopy.
Current projects:
Investigating proteases in chronic liver disease and hepatocellular carcinoma (Honours)
Project details
Primary Supervisor: Dr. Bobby Boumelhem
Supervisory Team: Professor Mark Gorrell; Dr. Jiali Carrie Huang
Centre: Cancer Innovations
Primary liver cancer is the 5th leading cause of cancer related deaths in Australia with incidence rates increasing yearly. The pathogenesis of chronic liver injury and cancer is driven by chronic cell death, proliferation and inflammation. Proteases are enzymes that cleave peptide bonds within proteins, often with regulatory outcomes in physiological and pathological processes. Proteases can regulate the structure, localization and function of many proteins, and influence protein-protein or protein-cell interaction crucial in disease pathogenesis, including cirrhosis and cancer. As such, our lab is keenly interested in the dipeptidyl peptidase (DPP) family of enzymes in chronic liver disease including cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. Fibroblast activation protein alpha (FAP), a member of the DPP family, is a unique protease with increase abundance in abnormal human tissue, especially in tissue-remodelling that occurs in injury, fibrosis and tumours. A project will be derived based on student’s interests in chronic liver disease and/or liver cancer. We are equipped with multiple mouse models of chronic liver disease including liver cancer as well as treatment with exciting and novel pan-DPP inhibitors.