Today, doctors can only treat the symptoms of advanced liver disease. They have no approved medicine that treats the disease itself.
That’s why hepatologists like Dr Edward Britton and his colleague Dr Paul Richardson, of Royal Liverpool University Hospital, are excited about RTX001 – an experimental cell-based treatment for decompensated (advanced) liver cirrhosis.
Dr Britton and Dr Richardson are investigators on the EMERALD trial, exploring RTX001 as a potential alternative to liver transplantation.
Liver disease kills more than 12,000 people a year in the UK and at least 50,000 every year in the US, so new disease-modifying treatments are desperately needed.