Supporting research into liver disease
5 March 2025
EPCC will host the NHS data that underpins SteatoSITE, a unique Scottish project developing new tests and treatments for people with metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH), the progressive form of metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD).
SteatoSITE contains NHS clinical and pathology data, including images of liver tissue, and has generated RNA sequencing data from tissue provided by the NHS Scotland Biorepository network. This data is provided by three Scottish NHS health boards: Grampian, Lothian and Glasgow.
EPCC's involvement in the SteatoSITE project began this month. Supported by the Scottish Funding Council (SFC), the SteatoSITE Data Commons will migrate from the University of Glasgow to EPCC Safe Haven Services over the next few weeks.
SteatoSITE has approval from the West of Scotland REC and Privacy Panel for Health and Social Care to hold entirely de-indentified data and for delegated ethics. This means individual research projects need only apply to the SteatoSITE Scientific Advisory Board for permission to undertake a project using the SteatoSITE data and need not apply for their own REC approvals, thus avoiding delays in the start of research studies due to repeated and lengthy processes.
Figure 1: EPCC SteatoSITE architecture. Image by Ruairidh MacLeod, EPCC.
SteatoSITE (see Figure 1) currently comprises EPCC Safe Haven Services as well as an outsourced component in the Azure Cloud for access to data provided by a commercial company. In future, companies that are on-boarded will use the Trusted Research Environment (TRE) of EPCC's Safe Haven Services instead.
In addition to the migration of data into EPCC Safe Haven Services, the data team at the University of Glasgow will pass on their technical knowledge to EPCC by the end of March. The technical EPCC team, who are already experienced in working with the Scottish National Safe Haven and the Scottish Imaging Archive, will then ingest, prepare and make data available to researchers. Our goal is to make the migration and technical support so seamless that researchers do not notice the physical move.
From 2026 SteatoSITE will need to be self-funding through a mix of commercial contracts and academic funding. EPCC is working closely with Edinburgh Innovations and the Edinburgh Research Office at the University of Edinburgh and the clinical academic leads to set up costing plans for future commercial users of the service.
