Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease - opportunities for personalized treatment and drug development

Introduction: Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) constitutes a highly prevalent liver disorder whose rise in prevalence is closely connected to the growing rates of obesity, dyslipidemia, and type 2 diabetes. Importantly, kinetics and likelihood of NAFLD onset and its progression to non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) and fibrosis differs considerably between individuals. In recent years, the understanding of NAFLD pathogenesis has increased substantially and a multitude of factors, genetic predispositions, molecular signatures or NAFLD-related liver injury and comorbidities have been identified. Areas Covered: This article summarizes inter-individual differences in NAFLD, including genetic variations, epigenetic and metabolic alterations and differences in the microbiome. We also discuss how these features might be leveraged for treatment personalization. Expert opinion: The complexity and heterogeneity of NAFLD provides considerable challenges for drug developers and has resulted in numerous costly project failures. We expect that increased knowledge and appreciation of patient-specific factors will facilitate better patient stratification and identification of those individuals that benefit most from a given therapeutic strategy. Furthermore, we anticipate that pathophysiologically relevant in vivo and ex vivo disease models as well as large-scale chemogenomic projects hold promise to drastically improve NAFLD drug development to complement lifestyle and surgical interventions with pharmacological approaches.