Abstract
Liver fibrosis is resulted from long standing hepatic damage with chronic inflammation, and when advanced to cirrhotic state, it becomes a cause of high mortality often due to associated hepatic insufficiency and hepatic cancer development. Although highly efficient anti-viral drug against HCV and HBV have been recently introduced into clinical field, because of the fact that these drugs are not directly targeting. On liver fibrosis, development of anti-fibrosis drugs is still unmet medical need. We are currently conducting phase1b/2 clinical trials on patients with advanced hepatic fibrosis in US, Europe and Japan, using siRNA against collagen specific chaperone, HSP47 encapsulated in liposomes which are coupled with vitamin A to deliver the liposome to collagen producing cells, stellate cells which specifically take up vitamin A. In this review, we will discuss about our anti-fibrosis drug, mainly focusing on its clinical development on hepatic fibrosis, and some experimental attempt to extend its application for other organ fibrosis.
