“The EMERALD study offers the possibility of incorporating macrophage-based cell therapy into our day-to-day treatment of patients with cirrhosis.”
So says Dr. Manuel Rodríguez-Perálvarez, MD, PhD, Hon. Consultant Hepatologist and Associate Professor of Medicine at Hospital Universitario Reina Sofía in Córdoba, Spain. It is one of the participating Spanish sites in our Phase I/II EMERALD study for RTX001, our engineered RMT for end-stage liver disease (ESLD).
For him, the EMERALD study represents an important opportunity to explore what this approach could mean for clinical practice.
If shown to be effective, RMT could offer a way to restore liver function in patients with advanced disease. As he explains:
“What does this mean in the medium to long term? Well, if this treatment works, in the future we could treat patients we currently see in hospital who are very unwell — with a liver that is failing — and restore that liver to function. This could allow us to avoid liver transplantation in many patients and improve the quality of life for the majority of our patients.”
And ultimately, it is the possibility of changing outcomes for people living with ESLD which makes this research so significant:
“Beyond that, we could of course save lives. Cirrhosis is a disease with high mortality and we currently have no treatment capable of reversing that. Perhaps, in the future, macrophages will be that treatment.”
We’ll be presenting the interim data from our Phase I/II EMERALD study for RTX001 in a late-breaker at this year’s @AASLD meeting. Be sure to catch our presentation and get in touch to arrange a meeting with the team in Denver.