Long before a liver tumor appears, a high-fat diet can push liver cells into a risky survival mode. That is the central finding of a new study led by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, including Alex K. Shalek of MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Sciences and the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. The senior team also includes Ömer Yilmaz, an MIT biology associate professor and Koch Institute member, and Wolfram Goessling, co-director of the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology. Their work, published in Cell, traces how chronic metabolic stress can make hepatocytes, the liver’s main workhorse cells, behave more like immature cells that are easier to turn cancerous. The study focuses on a major public health problem: metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease, or MASLD. It affects more than one-third of people worldwide, according to the paper. In its more severe form, metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis, or MASH, the liver can become inflamed and scarred. Over time, that damage can progress to cirrhosis, organ failure, and hepatocellular carcinoma, the most common …