Takeda joins forces with GE Healthcare on liver disease research

Japan’s largest drugmaker Takeda Pharmaceutical (TYO: 4502) has entered into an alliance agreement with UK-based GE Healthcare for R&D focusing on imaging modalities in the field of hepatic fibrosis, a key factor in the diagnosis and treatment of liver diseases.

According to the accord, GE Healthcare will provide Takeda with its diagnostic imaging technology used to generate a liver stiffness map as part of the R&D work Takeda is conducting on liver diseases. By optimizing the strengths of both companies in the alliance, the collaborative effort aims to help develop therapeutic drugs as well as new diagnostic technologies for liver diseases.

Early stages of liver disease have almost no clinical symptoms; disease progress is characterized by a hardening of the tissues due to fibrosis accompanying the inflammation of the liver and a worsening of symptoms due to cirrhosis. Amid such worldwide trends of recent years as the aging population and less healthy lifestyle habits, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) has emerged as a type of metabolic syndrome.