Hepatology seminars

Liver toxicity can emerge late in drug development when early assays fail to capture human biology, exposure or injury mechanisms. This webinar introduces Axiom’s hepatic profiling approach, combining multicellular liver systems, high-content imaging, transcriptomics, proteomics and ADME measurements. Its reasoning agent integrates those results with partner assays, chemical-series context, exposure estimates and clinical evidence to assess mechanistic liver-safety risks. Rather than using a single cell-toxicity score, the approach develops interpretable, series-specific structure–toxicity hypotheses, compares analogues, ranks compounds and suggests follow-up experiments or structural changes. Performance on established liver-injury reference compounds and newer molecules is examined through case studies, showing how multimodal evidence can inform medicinal-chemistry decisions and predicted therapeutic index.

Harvey Alter, Michael Houghton and Charles Rice recount how an unexplained form of transfusion-associated hepatitis became an identifiable and treatable viral infection. Alter’s clinical and transmission studies distinguished non-A, non-B hepatitis from the known hepatitis viruses. Houghton’s molecular approach isolated genetic material from the elusive agent and enabled tests for hepatitis C infection. Rice’s experiments with viral RNA established that the newly identified virus could itself cause hepatitis and helped make its replication experimentally tractable. The lectures connect these complementary approaches to the development of safer blood supplies, experimental models and antiviral medicines, while showing how clinical observation, molecular cloning and causal experiments contributed different pieces of the discovery.