The Mechanism Investigation and Animal Study for the Development of Bpc157 as a Novel Drug for Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver

As the world-wide prevalence of obesity increases markedly, obesity-related metabolic syndrome has become a major public health problem. Among these disorders, incidence of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) also boosts up quickly. Hepatic fat accumulation can progress to liver inflammation, tissue damage, fibrosis and liver cancer. Significantly increased medical expense becomes a great burden. Nevertheless, there is no effective drug for NAFLD currently. Therefore, it is important to develop new drug by investigating the mechanism and animal study. BPC157, a peptide derived from human gastric juice, has been proved to enhance the angiogenesis and function of mesenchymal stem cells both in vivo and in vitro in our laboratory. We also demonstrated that BPC157 can significantly reduce the radiation-induced liver injury and lipid accumulation both in vitro and in vivo through the upregulation of KLF4 and downregulation of HIF-2α. More importantly, preliminary results from our in vitro oil-feeding experiment and in vivo fatty liver animal model demonstrated that BPC 157 can prevent the lipid accumulation in the liver cells which makes it a suitable candidate for a new drug for fatty liver and deserves further study. The present proposal will further investigate the mechanism underlying the effect of BPC157 on eliminating the lipid accumulation and protecting from liver injury. Animal study will also be performed to understand the optimum effect of BPC157 treatment as a reference for the future clinical application.

Project ID:PC10811-0027
External Project ID:MOST108-2314-B182-066