Taming the Savage Beast from Within – Tcf21, a Novel Regulator of Stellate Cell Deactivation

While "music has charms to soothe a savage beast", it has no known effect on inactivating hepatic stellate cells (HSC) during fibrosis regression, but the article by Nakano et al. in this issue of Hepatology has identified just such a signal. The success of curative antiviral therapies for hepatitis C virus has revealed the remarkable capacity of hepatic fibrosis to regress spontaneously when injury is attenuated. These clinical observations have validated years of animal studies demonstrating that fibrosis is reversible, however the underlying mechanisms have remained elusive.