MERTK and acute liver failure: Independently, patients with acute liver failure have been found to display markedly elevated numbers of Mer+ macrophages and monocytes in their liver, lymph nodes, and circulation (Barcena et al, 2015; Bernsmeier et al, 2015; Triantafyllou et al, 2018), and Mer has, therefore, emerged as a target in the treatment of liver disease (Mukherjee et al, 2016; Bellan et al, 2019).