Photo of Christian Simonsson

Christian Simonsson

PhD student

My research aims to develop further understanding on one of the most common liver diseases, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), through a combination of systems biology modelling and multi modal MRI.

My research

Understanding the development and progression of NAFLD.

Obesity is increasing worldwide and is one of the biggest health risks in today’s society. Because of this, one of the most common liver diseases is non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Fatty liver is characterized by the excess storage of fat in the liver. Fatty liver is not inherently dangerous, but it can in some cases develop into chronic inflammation in the liver, which is called non-alcoholic steato-hepatitis (NASH). NASH can cause damage to the liver, inducing the formation of scar tissue also called fibrosis. When this state is prolonged the disease can progress into cirrhosis which is when the scar tissue becomes too severe and the liver’s functions starts to fail. Cirrhosis is non-reversible, and the only treatment is a liver-transplantation. Because NAFLD is becoming more prevalent it is of importance to increase the understanding of what metabolic changes occur during the disease’s development and progression. It is also of importance to have precise and non-invasive clinical methods to be able to detect how far a patient is in the disease progression. It might also be of high importance to be able to detect high degrees of inflammation early, so that steps can be taken to limit the development into the more severe conditions.

In my PhD-project the goal is to try to increase our understating of NAFLD development and progression. We conduct several clinical studies which focuses on collecting NAFLD related data with a myriad of MRI methods. The goal is to use this data to develop and evaluate MRI methods that aim to detect measurements related to NAFLD and NASH. With the use of this data and data from other types of experiments e.g. animal-models and micro physiological systems (also describing NAFLD), we hope to be able to construct system biology models describing the underlying mechanism for NAFLD development and progression into NASH.

Publications

2023

Markus Karlsson, Christian Simonsson, Nils Dahlström, Gunnar Cedersund, Peter Lundberg (2023) Mathematical models for biomarker calculation of drug-induced liver injury in humans and experimental models based on gadoxetate enhanced magnetic resonance imaging PLOS ONE, Vol. 18, Article e0279168 Continue to DOI
Christian Simonsson, William Lövfors, Niclas Bergqvist, Elin Nyman, Peter Gennemark, Karin G. Stenkula, Gunnar Cedersund (2023) A multi-scale in silico mouse model for diet-induced insulin resistance Biochemical engineering journal, Vol. 191, Article 108798 Continue to DOI
Patrik Nasr, Mikael Forsgren, Wile Balkhed, Cecilia Jönsson, Nils Dahlström, Christian Simonsson, Shan Cai, Anna Cederborg, Martin Henriksson, Henrik Stjernman, Martin Rejler, Daniel Sjoegren, Gunnar Cedersund, Wolf Bartholomä, Ingvar Rydén, Peter Lundberg, Stergios Kechagias, Olof Dahlqvist Leinhard, Mattias Ekstedt (2023) A rapid, non-invasive, clinical surveillance for CachExia, sarcopenia, portal hypertension, and hepatocellular carcinoma in end-stage liver disease: the ACCESS-ESLD study protocol BMC Gastroenterology, Vol. 23, Article 454 Continue to DOI
Tilda Herrgårdh, Christian Simonsson, Mattias Ekstedt, Peter Lundberg, Karin G. Stenkula, Elin Nyman, Peter Gennemark, Gunnar Cedersund (2023) A multi-scale digital twin for adiposity-driven insulin resistance in humans: diet and drug effects Diabetology & Metabolic Syndrome, Vol. 15, Article 250 Continue to DOI

2022

Oscar Silfvergren, Christian Simonsson, Mattias Ekstedt, Peter Lundberg, Peter Gennemark, Gunnar Cedersund (2022) Digital twin predicting diet response before and after long-term fasting PloS Computational Biology, Vol. 18, Article e1010469 Continue to DOI

Research

Organisation