Liver Immunology Group

The liver immunology group studies all aspects of the immune response within the liver that contribute to disease pathology and protection. Using biorepositories of blood, liver and gastrointestinal tissue we study the phenotypical changes and functional responses to chronic viral infections, metabolic liver disease and liver cancer. We employ state of the art technology that ranges from liver and gut organoids to single cell and spatial transcriptomics. Recent highlights of our research include the discovery of functional memory natural killer cells following HBV and COVID-19 infection, as well as spatial and single cell characterization of cancer-specific immune responses.

 

Recent Achievements

  • Establishing spatial transcriptomics to study infiltrating immune cells into cancer and identify new targets for cancer immunotherapy
  • Identifying a new risk prediction algorithm for mortality of patients with liver cirrhosis in a multinational cohort
  • Functional characterization for memory natural killer cells in hepatitis B virus infection and COVID-19 infection

Recent publications

KLRG1+ natural killer cells exert a novel antifibrotic function in chronic hepatitis B

March 2024

HBV vaccination and HBV infection induces HBV-specific natural killer cell memory

March 2020

wWe demonstrate that macrophages are primary responders to IFN-λ, uniquely positioned to bridge the gap between IFN-λ producing cells and lymphocyte populations that are not intrinsically responsive to IFN-λ

November 2019

The Role of Zinc in Antiviral Immunity

July 2019

NAME ROLE
Prof Golo Ahlenstiel Group Leader
Dr Scott Read Co-Lead, Senior Scientist, Senior Lecturer WSU
Gatian Njiomegnie PhD student
Dmitrii Shek PhD student
Dishen (Corey) Chen PhD student
Eric Kalo PhD student
Thanh Le PhD student

 

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