Stuart Forbes Research Group | Centre for Regenerative Medicine

Liver regeneration and therapy

Our research concentrates on understanding how the liver regenerates and developing new treatments for liver disease.

Professor Stuart Forbes

Group Leader and IRR Director

Contact details

Aims and areas of interest

By understanding what controls liver regeneration in liver disease and injury our group aims to promote healthy liver regeneration. There are two linked programs of research:

The biology of liver damage and regeneration
The development of new therapies for liver disease

More information

Liver disease is the 5th commonest cause of death in the UK and the deaths from lives disease are rising. Currently the only curative option for end-stage liver disease is liver transplantation. Donor organ availability cannot meet demand and unfortunately patients die while waiting for a suitable organ to become available. Alternative therapeutic strategies are urgently required for the treatment of advanced liver disease.

Key publications

Brennan PN, MacMillan M, Manship T, Moroni F, Glover A, Troland D, MacPherson I, Graham C, Aird R, Semple SIK, Morris DM, Fraser AR, Pass C, McGowan NWA, Turner ML, Manson L, Lachlan NJ, Dillon JF, Kilpatrick AM, Campbell JDM, Fallowfield JA, Forbes SJ. Autologous macrophage therapy for liver cirrhosis: a phase 2 open-label randomized controlled trial. Nat Med. 2025 Mar;31(3):979-987. doi: 10.1038/s41591-024-03406-8. Epub 2025 Jan 10. PMID: 39794616; PMCID: PMC11922741.
Ferreira-Gonzalez S, Man TY, Esser H, Aird R, Kilpatrick AM, Rodrigo-Torres D, Younger N, Campana L, Gadd VL, Dwyer B, Aleksieva N, Boulter L, Macmillan MT, Wang Y, Mylonas KJ, Ferenbach DA, Kendall TJ, Lu WY, Acosta JC, Kurian D, O'Neill S, Oniscu GC, Banales JM, Krimpenfort PJ, Forbes SJ. Senolytic treatment preserves biliary regenerative capacity lost through cellular senescence during cold storage. Sci Transl Med. 2022 Dec 7;14(674):eabj4375. doi: 10.1126/scitranslmed.abj4375. Epub 2022 Dec 7. PMID: 36475903.
Raven A, Lu WY, Man TY, Ferreira-Gonzalez S, O'Duibhir E, Dwyer BJ, Thomson JP, Meehan RR, Bogorad R, Koteliansky V, Kotelevtsev Y, Ffrench-Constant C, Boulter L, Forbes SJ. Cholangiocytes act as facultative liver stem cells during impaired hepatocyte regeneration. Nature. 2017 Jul 20;547(7663):350-354. doi: 10.1038/nature23015. Epub 2017 Jul 12. Erratum in: Nature. 2018 Mar 14;555(7696):402. doi: 10.1038/nature25996. PMID: 28700576; PMCID: PMC5522613.
Lu WY, Bird TG, Boulter L, Tsuchiya A, Cole AM, Hay T, Guest RV, Wojtacha D, Man TY, Mackinnon A, Ridgway RA, Kendall T, Williams MJ, Jamieson T, Raven A, Hay DC, Iredale JP, Clarke AR, Sansom OJ, Forbes SJ. Hepatic progenitor cells of biliary origin with liver repopulation capacity. Nat Cell Biol. 2015 Aug;17(8):971-983. doi: 10.1038/ncb3203. Epub 2015 Jul 20. PMID: 26192438; PMCID: PMC4612439.
Boulter L, Govaere O, Bird TG, Radulescu S, Ramachandran P, Pellicoro A, Ridgway RA, Seo SS, Spee B, Van Rooijen N, Sansom OJ, Iredale JP, Lowell S, Roskams T, Forbes SJ. Macrophage-derived Wnt opposes Notch signaling to specify hepatic progenitor cell fate in chronic liver disease. Nat Med. 2012 Mar 4;18(4):572-9. doi: 10.1038/nm.2667. PMID: 22388089; PMCID: PMC3364717.