The liver is an organ that sits just under your rib cage on the right side of your abdomen, and is essential for digesting food and ridding your body of toxic substances.
Liver disease can be inherited or caused by external factors such as viruses, alcohol use or obesity.
Liver cancer can be a primary form of the disease where a tumour starts in the liver, or secondary where cancer has spread to the liver from another part of the body.
Liver Disease Support
Developing a vaccine for the Hepatitis C virus, a leading causes of liver disease and if left untreated in later stages, can result in cancer.
The vaccine being developed by the Basil Hetzel Institute for Translational Health Research could be used as both a therapeutic and prophylactic vaccine – treating patients who are already infected as well as community prevention.
Investigating a group of immune cells that could be a key target to predict whether a patient’s bowel cancer is likely to spread.
Researcher
Dr Kevin Fenix will use these insights to find a new way of detecting and treating bowel cancer spread and preventing liver metastasis.
Building a biobank of liver metastatic bowel cancer tissue to analyse and identify biomarkers to help predict whether bowel cancer is likely to spread.
Researcher
Dr Kevin Fenix has established the South Australian Liver Tissue (SALT) biobank to aid this important research.
