Marisa presented the lab's research at the Summer Liver Academy Meeting (SLAM) in Cape Coral, Florida on June 17. Her presentation highlighted the lab’s efforts to use patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) to investigate how polygenic risk influences MASLD progression and response to the thyroid hormone receptor β agonist resmetirom.
This work aims to better understand why some individuals are more susceptible to developing advanced liver disease and why patients may exhibit different responses to emerging therapies. By combining human genetics with iPSC-based disease modeling, the project seeks to identify biological pathways that contribute to disease heterogeneity and therapeutic response. This research was a collaborative effort involving Yuanyuan Qin, Yuqing Zhang, Sheila Teker, Julia Su, Elizabeth Theusch, Leela Venkatesan, and Yu-Lin Kuang.
In addition, student researcher Sheila Teker presented a poster describing her senior honors thesis investigating the role of SUGP1 as a genetic driver of MASLD/MASH. This work highlighted the potentially overlooked impact of SUGP1 as a contributor to metabolic liver disease.
