Dissecting the balance of effectors and regulatory immune cell subsets in human liver microenvironment and delivering clinical GMP regulatory T cell therapies in liver diseases

Group leader: Professor Ye Htun Oo, Professor of Autoimmune Liver Diseases and Translational Hepatology and Consultant Hepatologist

Overview

Ye’s research group investigates intra-hepatic effector immune cells and regulatory T cells balance and their crosstalk with hepatic parenchymal, biliary epithelial cells and stellate cells in hepatic microenvironment utilising primary human cells from Birmingham Liver transplant programme. 

These basic science exploratory findings are applied to optimise the effective development of the clinical GMP Treg cell therapy for treatment of liver diseases.  His team also leads immunology work stream of UK-Autoimmune Hepatitis Consortium and analyse longitudinal samples from patients with treatment naïve AIH from National Health Services Trusts in UK to stratify cohorts for personalised medicine.

Our research group

Publications

Chen YY, Jeffery HC, Hunter S, Bhogal R, Birtwistle J, Braitch MK, Roberts S, Ming M, Hannah J, Thomas C, Adali G, Hübscher SG, Syn WK, Afford S, Lalor PF, Adams DH and Oo YH (2016) Human intrahepatic regulatory T cells are functional, require IL-2 from effector cells for survival, and are susceptible to Fas ligand-mediated apoptosis. Hepatology 64(1):138-50

Jeffery HC, van Wilgenburg B, Kurioka A, Parekh K, Stirling K, Roberts S, Dutton EE, Hunter S, Geh D, Braitch MK, Rajanayagam J, Iqbal T, Pinkney T, Brown R, Withers DR, Adams DH, Klenerman P and Oo YH (2016) Biliary epithelium and liver B cells exposed to bacteria activate intrahepatic MAIT cells through MR1. J Hepatol 64(5):1118-27

Jeffery HC, Braitch MK, Brown S and Oo YH (2016) Clinical Potential of Regulatory T Cell Therapy in Liver Diseases: An Overview and Current Perspectives. Front Immunol 7:334

Than NN, Jeffery HC and Oo YH (2016) Autoimmune Hepatitis: Progress from Global Immunosuppression to Personalised Regulatory T Cell Therapy. Can J Gastroenterol Hepatol 2016:7181685