Dr Ghada Nouairia
Discovering new biological markers to predict PSC progression and personalise care
Awarded to Dr Ghada Nouairia, Karolinska Institutet, Sweden
The total grant awarded is £15,000
Duration of award: 1 year (January 2025 to December 2025)
Research title: Discovering new biological markers to predict PSC progression and personalise care
Summary
PSC Support has awarded £15,000 to Dr Ghada Nouairia, from the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden to find new biological markers that can predict how PSC will progress for individual patients.
In this pilot study, she will conduct a deep analysis of components in blood samples from people with PSC and healthy individuals, followed by machine learning to identify useful biological blood markers and produce a complete biological description of the different types of PSC.
This will lay the foundations to (1) finding new targets for therapy, encouraging pharmacological companies to invest in PSC treatment and (2) developing personalised PSC healthcare plans.
What will Dr Nouairia do?
Dr Nouairia will merge blood protein, metabolite and gene activity measurements with a range of autoantibody measurements in blood samples from 36 people. Autoantibodies are immune proteins that mistakenly attack the body's own cells.
This will reveal different layers of biological mechanisms involved in PSC and its complications.
She will then use advanced machine learning methods to find biological markers that can predict how PSC will progress and characterise the different ‘types’ of PSC:
- PSC with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD)
- PSC without IBD,
- PSC that progresses towards end stage liver disease quickly,
- PSC with cancer.
Why is this study important?
PSC still represents the greatest unmet need in liver medicine despite being ‘discovered’ more than 175 years ago. It is complex, progresses differently from one person to the next, and the biological processes behind it are still not fully understood.
Understanding them could unlock tools to accurately diagnose PSC, understand how the disease might progress at an individual level and pinpoint concrete targets for treatments.
Dr Nouairia’s study will use the latest technologies and advanced machine learning methods to make sense of the complex biological information from blood samples of people with PSC. This can then be used to develop tools to transform our everyday care and quality of life.
Progress Report
Primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC) can vary widely between individuals. Some people also have inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), some develop bile duct cancer (cholangiocarcinoma, CCA), and others experience more severe liver damage. To understand these differences, we analysed blood samples from 33 people with
and without PSC and measured three types of circulating molecules: microRNAs, proteins, and metabolites.
Using advanced data analysis and machine-learning methods, we discovered molecular “signatures” linked to different PSC subtypes.
Key findings include:
- Each PSC phenotype has its own set of molecules that may serve as future biomarkers for disease progression and risk prediction of CCA.
- PSC with and without IBD look very similar biologically, but machine learning could still pick up subtle molecular differences.
- Severe PSC and PSC that progresses to CCA share few molecular features, suggesting possible early markers of cancer risk.
These results indicate that specific combinations of blood-based molecules may help predict PSC progression, identify individuals at higher cancer risk, and guide more personalised follow-up in the future.
Dr Ghada Nouairia, November 2025
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