Gorrell Laboratory
Our focus in liver disease research is understanding the roles of a key enzyme family in progressive liver damage and cancer.
About the Gorrell Laboratory
Our discoveries indicate that the four enzymes of the DPP4 family are drivers of liver disease towards liver failure and cancer. Fortunately, enzymes make excellent drug targets and one of the enzymes, named DPP4, is the target of a successful diabetes drug class that our research helped create.
We are working towards understanding what makes chronic liver diseases wax and wane, and are learning about the components of tumours that support the cancer cells, called the tumour microenvironment. This work is directed towards discovering new treatment options, and showing the value of our new test for liver fibrosis.
Centre for Cancer Innovations
- Fatty liver disease
- Liver cancer
- Liver fibrosis
- Protease enzymes
- Protein biochemistry
- Liver disease models
- pathogenesis
- Protease substrate discovery
Development and validation of a novel circulating fibroblast activation protein – based predictive model to improve fibrosis risk stratification in metabolic liver disease population
Dipeptidyl Peptidase Inhibition Enhances CD8 T Cell Recruitment and Activates Intrahepatic Inflammasome in a Murine Model of Hepatocellular Carcinoma
DPP4 Inhibitor Sitagliptin Enhances Lymphocyte Recruitment and Prolongs Survival in a Syngeneic Ovarian Cancer Mouse Model
DPP9 deficiency: An inflammasomopathy that can be rescued by lowering NLRP1/IL-1 signaling
Fibroblast activation protein: A cell surface dipeptidyl peptidase and gelatinase expressed by stellate cells at the tissue remodelling interface in human cirrhosis
People
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Professor Mark Gorrell
Gorrell Laboratory
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Dr Bobby Boumelhem
Postdoc Research Officer
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Jasmine Minh Hang Nguyen
PhD student
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Mingchang Zhang
PhD student
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JiaLi Carrie Huang
PhD student -
Amy Yiqun Qu
PhD student -
Ziqi Vincent Wang
PhD student
Student Opportunities
We primarily seek to develop the research skills of our students. We use diverse techniques to study roles of enzymes, so students learn one or more according to their needs and interests. The primary supervisor of future students is Dr Bobby Boumelhem, whose primary expertise is cell biology and microscopy.
