Dr Saeed Esmaili
Group Leader (Senior Research Scientist)
MBBS; PhD (Medicine)
saeed.esmaili@sydney.edu.au
Biography
Dr Saeed Esmaili is a senior research scientist at the Westmead Institute for Medical Research and Group Leader of the Ageing Liver and Metabolic Fatty Liver Diseases group within the Storr Liver Centre. He completed his PhD in Medicine at the University of Sydney in 2014. His research examines liver–bone marrow crosstalk in the pathogenesis of fatty liver disease and liver cancer, integrating human metabolic disease and pre-clinical models with single-cell and spatial genomics. He leads a multidisciplinary program that applies systems medicine and CRISPR-based approaches to understand and reverse age-related liver disease and is committed to mentoring the next generation of translational scientists.
Research interests
Dr Esmaili’s research investigates why the liver becomes progressively resistant to therapy as it advances. His group has shown ageing drives this loss of therapeutic responsiveness in metabolic dysfunction-associated fatty liver disease (MAFLD). Two linked discoveries underpin the program: that ageing reshapes crosstalk between the liver and bone marrow, expanding inflammatory haematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs) whose myeloid progeny drive liver inflammation and fibrosis; and that the ageing liver loses its cellular identity. Using systems medicine, single-cell and spatial multi-omics, and CRISPR-based gene therapies, his team aims to rejuvenate hepatocyte identity, normalise the liver–bone marrow axis, and develop blood-based markers of liver biological ageing to predict and reverse disease progression.
THEMES: Liver disease; Metabolic disease and immunometabolism; Ageing; Cancer
Adjunct roles
| Ad hoc reviewer – NHMRC Investigator Grants; Journal of Hepatology; Cell Death & Disease; Nutrients |
Current grants
| Snow Program for Liver Health (Snow Medical; $15.5M over seven years, headquartered at the Storr Liver Centre) | ||
| Network-based therapeutic design in cancer (Sydney West Translational Cancer Research Centre, $20,000). Collaborators: Prof Jacob George, Prof Marco Herold (CRISPR), A/Prof Sharma (Garvan), Dr Mandeep Singh and Dr Fabio Luciani. |
Affiliations
University of Sydney
