Volume 36, No 3, Mar 2026

ISSN: 1001-0602 
EISSN: 1748-7838 2018 
impact factor 17.848* 
(Clarivate Analytics, 2019)

Volume 36 Issue 3, March 2026: 179-180

RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS

Intestinal GAPs: neuro–epithelial–immune modules for liver protection

Manuel O. Jakob^1,2 , Andreas Diefenbach^1,3,4,5,*

¹Institute of Microbiology, Infectious Diseases and Immunology, Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Campus Benjamin Franklin, Berlin, Germany
²Department of Visceral Surgery and Medicine, Inselspital, Bern University Hospital, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
³Cluster of Excellence ImmunoPreCept, Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany
⁴German Rheumatology Research Center, a Leibniz Institute, Berlin, Germany
⁵German Center for Child and Adolescent Health (DZKJ), partner site Berlin, Berlin, Germany
Correspondence: Andreas Diefenbach(andreas.diefenbach@charite.de)

Targeted communication between the environment and immune cells is a key determinant of intestinal and organismal homeostasis, yet the precise regulation of these processes in health and disease remains incompletely understood. A recent Nature paper shows that communication via one of such conduits, goblet cell-associated antigen passages (GAPs), is perturbed in two common diseases that were largely conceptualized as liver diseases, alcohol-associated liver disease and metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis.

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41422-025-01188-3

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