Marianna Hösel, Mathias Broxtermann, Hanna Janicki, Knud Esser, Silke Arzberger, Pia Hartmann, Sonja Gillen, Jörg Kleeff, Dirk Stabenow, Margarete Odenthal, Percy Knolle, Michael Hallek, Ulrike Protzer, Hildegard Büning – 24 August 2011 – Adeno‐associated viral vectors (rAAV) are frequently used in gene therapy trials. Although rAAV vectors are of low immunogenicity, humoral as well as T cell responses may be induced. While the former limits vector reapplication, the expansion of cytotoxic T cells correlates with liver inflammation and loss of transduced hepatocytes.

Robert P. Myers, Gilles Pomier‐Layrargues, Richard Kirsch, Aaron Pollett, Andres Duarte‐Rojo, David Wong, Melanie Beaton, Mark Levstik, Pam Crotty, Magdy Elkashab – 24 August 2011 – Failure of liver stiffness measurement (LSM) by transient elastography (TE, FibroScan) and unreliable results occur in ≈5% and 15% of patients, respectively, mainly due to obesity.

Charles Vanderpool, Erin E. Sparks, Kari A. Huppert, Maureen Gannon, Anna L. Means, Stacey S. Huppert – 24 August 2011 – Notch signaling and hepatocyte nuclear factor‐6 (HNF‐6) are two genetic factors known to affect lineage commitment in the bipotential hepatoblast progenitor cell (BHPC) population. A genetic interaction involving Notch signaling and HNF‐6 in mice has been inferred through separate experiments showing that both affect BHPC specification and bile duct morphogenesis.

John R. Lake – 24 August 2011 – Key Points

Jody C. Olson, Julia A. Wendon, David J. Kramer, Vicente Arroyo, Rajiv Jalan, Guadalupe Garcia‐Tsao, Patrick S. Kamath – 24 August 2011 – Acute deterioration of patients with cirrhosis manifests as multiple organ failure requiring admission to an intensive care unit. Precipitating events may be viral hepatitis, typically in Asia, and drug or alcoholic hepatitis and variceal hemorrhage in the West. Patients with cirrhosis in the intensive care unit have a high mortality, and each admission is associated with a mean charge of US $116,200.

Pil Soo Sung, Seung Kew Yoon – 24 August 2011

Pratima Sharma, Douglas E. Schaubel, Qi Gong, Mary Guidinger, Robert M. Merion – 24 August 2011 – Candidates with fulminant hepatic failure (Status‐1A) receive the highest priority for liver transplantation (LT) in the United States. However, no studies have compared wait‐list mortality risk among end‐stage liver disease (ESLD) candidates with high Model for End‐Stage Liver Disease (MELD) scores to those listed as Status‐1A.

Jorge Ortiz, Eyob Feyssa, Victor Araya, Stalin Campos – 24 August 2011

Takehiro Noda, Masafumi Shimoda, Vivian Ortiz, Alphonse E. Sirica, Jack R. Wands – 24 August 2011 – Dendritic cells (DCs) capture and process proteins and present peptides on the cell surface in the context of major histocompatibility complex I and II molecules to induce antigen‐specific T cell immune responses.

Michael L. Volk, Michael Hagan – 24 August 2011 – Not only is there a limited supply of organs for liver transplantation, but the quality of the available organs is not uniform. Risk factors such as donor age and cause of death are known to predict graft failure, but their impact on the recipient's quality of life (QOL) has not been reported. We sent a QOL survey to 299 adults at our institution who had received a liver transplant 1 to 7 years before the study.