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.
Mission 2030 is an ambitious challenge and we can’t do it alone. We need your help to find the breakthrough people with PSC so desperately need.
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