Liver Spatial Omics Core
Comprehensive Liver Research Center
Overview
The Liver Spatial Omics Core offers the necessary tools and expertise for the comprehensive spatial- and cell-resolved dissection of genes and pathways in liver, facilitating novel discoveries into mechanisms causing MASLD and its progression to MASH and fibrosis in mice and diverse humans.
There is a great need to capture spatial information to better understand diseases of the liver. Although scRNA-sequencing can deconvolve the genetic heterogeneity of liver down to the single-cell level; in these times of precision hepatology and targeted therapy, spatial resolution is required to comprehensively understand the effects of zonation and cell-cell interplay in the heterogeneity and complex pathophysiology of MASLD. Spatial deconvolution of potential biomarker genes across the liver lobule could also potentially shape clinical outcomes through early diagnoses and treatment of this highly pervasive disease spectrum.
This core will provide cutting-edge technologies at an economy of scale, allowing for a cost-effective platform for discoveries on MASLD in the ethnically diverse human population base of greater Los Angeles County.
Leadership
Services
- Provides access to resources, technical expertise, and a suite of comprehensive bioinformatic tools to generate spatial data in liver
- Provides consultation on experimental design, tissue processing and methodologies needed to conduct experiments for generation of spatial data in liver and additional tissues, if relevant to the mission of the center
- Facilitate investigator-initiated spatial omics research in human liver specimens and in livers from the ‘humanized’ hybrid mouse diversity panel through interactions with the MASLD and Mouse Integrative Genetics Cores
- Provides training in use of computational tools for spatial data analysis