Center for Liver, Digestive and Metabolic Diseases (CLDM)

These disorders have a causal role in liver, digestive, and cardiovascular diseases, cancer, and other age-related chronic diseases and are, therefore, an important cause of morbidity. These disorders may have a long subclinical course, which may lead to large diagnostic gaps.

Because treatment of the end-organ damage associated with these diseases is difficult and often leads to permanent and significant loss of quality of life, it is essential to focus on prevention and early detection. Understanding the physiological, pathophysiological, and developmental bases of these diseases is necessary for the identification of interventional targets and for the design of novel evidence-based strategies to prevent, treat, or deal with the consequences of these diseases.

The CLDM programme studies relevant mechanisms throughout a person’s life span, including prenatal life, in order to understand the contribution of diet and metabolic programming to such diseases. These mechanisms include:

• Transport and processing of proteins, lipids, and metabolites;
• Gene regulation and signalling networks.