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©The Author(s) 2025. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Dec 14, 2025; 31(46): 113298
Published online Dec 14, 2025. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v31.i46.113298
Published online Dec 14, 2025. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v31.i46.113298
Levodopa and the dopamine receptor D1-Hippo/yes-associated protein axis: A novel therapeutic avenue for liver fibrosis
Shan-Shan Xie, Zhi-Gang Liu, Children’s Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, National Clinical Research Center for Child Health, Hangzhou 310052, Zhejiang Province, China
Shan-Shan Xie, Zhi-Gang Liu, Zhejiang Key Laboratory of Neonatal Diseases, Hangzhou 310052, Zhejiang Province, China
Shan-Shan Xie, Department of Cell Biology, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou 310058, Zhejiang Province, China
Zhi-Gang Liu, Department of Metabolism, Digestion and Reproduction, Imperial College London, London SW7 2AZ, United Kingdom
Co-corresponding authors: Shan-Shan Xie and Zhi-Gang Liu.
Author contributions: Liu ZG and Xie SS jointly supervised the study and contributed equally as co-corresponding authors to the conception, organization, and final approval of the manuscript.
Supported by Open Project Fund of Henan Provincial Research Center for Precision Diagnosis and Treatment of Pulmonary Diseases Based on Multi-omics, No. DZXGCZXKF04.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors report no relevant conflicts of interest for this article.
Open Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Shan-Shan Xie, Professor, Children’s Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, National Clinical Research Center for Child Health, No. 3333 Binsheng Road, Binjiang District, Hangzhou 310052, Zhejiang Province, China. sxie@zju.edu.cn
Received: August 21, 2025
Revised: October 9, 2025
Accepted: October 31, 2025
Published online: December 14, 2025
Processing time: 111 Days and 12.2 Hours
Revised: October 9, 2025
Accepted: October 31, 2025
Published online: December 14, 2025
Processing time: 111 Days and 12.2 Hours
Core Tip
Core Tip: This editorial highlights a novel mechanistic insight from a recent study by Wang et al, which identifies the dopamine precursor levodopa, a mainstay Parkinson’s disease therapy, as a potent inhibitor of liver fibrosis in experimental models. The antifibrotic effect is mediated through activation of dopamine receptor D1, which stimulates the Hippo signaling pathway to inactivate the profibrotic transcriptional coactivator yes-associated protein. With its decades-long clinical use, safety record, and affordability, levodopa offers translational advantages and positions this neurologic drug as a potentially rapid and cost-effective therapy for chronic liver disease.