Researchers from University College London (UCL) have invented and tested innovative carbon beads that could help restore a healthy gut microbiome as well as reduce the progression of liver disease.

The study, published in Gut and funded via the EU’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, demonstrated that the CARBALIVE beads had a positive impact on gut health, liver, kidney and brain function in animal models.

Estimated to affect around 100 million people worldwide, liver cirrhosis is caused by long-term liver damage, including alcohol, liver infections such as hepatitis B or C and obesity.

In collaboration with Yaqrit, a UCL spinout, UCL researchers developed small oral carbon beads with a microscopic physical structure to absorb both large and small molecules in the gut.

“The carbon beads are swallowed and passed through the body unaltered and work by absorbing the endotoxins and other metabolites produced by ‘bad’ bacteria in the gut, creating a better environment for the good bacteria to flourish and helping to restore microbiome health,” explained Michal Kowalski, vice president and CARBALIVE product lead, Yagrit.

In rats and mice, the beads were found to be effective in preventing the progression of liver fibrosis and injury in animals with cirrhosis after ingesting them every day for several weeks and reducing mortality in animals with acute-on-chronic liver failure.

Researchers then tested CARBALIVE on 28 human cirrhosis patients, which proved to be safe with minimal side effects.

The team plans to evaluate the efficacy of the carbon beads in humans in further trials. If successful, they could become an important tool for treating liver disease as well as other conditions associated with poor microbiome health, including irritable bowel syndrome.

Researchers from King’s College London’s (KCL) Comprehensive Cancer Centre have identified a key mechanism that governs how bone marrow stem cells work, which could potentially lead to new therapeutic pathways.

The findings from the study will help researchers further understand the key principles involved in stem cell biology and could provide new avenues for the development of efficient stem cell therapeutics.

Researchers identified two molecules, Hoxa9 and b-catenin, which control when bone marrow stem cells rest and recover, as well as when they act and replicate.

Both molecules work together to control a rare population of self-renewing stem cells that are predominantly found in bone marrow, known as haematopoietic stem cells (HSCs).

HSCs are protected from environmental stressors and prevent exhaustion by resting, while inactive HSCs must become active again, replicating themselves by turning into different blood cells, including red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets, to replenish the blood system and respond to problems including infections, blood loss and other complications.

Researchers discovered that this active/inactive characteristic of HSCs plays a key role in bone marrow transplantation, a vital procedure for several diseases, including cancer, as it is critical for cancer stem cells, which sustain the disease and cause relapse.

Researchers suggest that understanding this process will be vital when designing better treatments.

Eric So from the School of Cancer and Pharmaceutical Sciences, KCL, commented: “Given the critical functions of stem cells in bone marrow transplant and cancer biology, identification of a new druggable pathway not only will help to better understand the stem cell biology but also facilitate the development of more effective therapeutics in the future.”