Project description:With 350 million carriers worldwide who may suffer from serious sequelae, including hepatocellular carcinoma, chronic hepatitis B virus (CHB) infection remains an important health issue. Current antiviral therapies hardly eradicate the virus. Therefore, there are still imperative need to develop new therapeutic strategies and predictors for treatment response to cure the disease and avoid futile treatment. By taking the advantage of having the paired liver biopsy samples of IFNalpha responders before/after treatment and pretreatment samples from responders and non-responders, we could characterize the intrahepatic expression profiles associated with necroinflammatory activity and the profiles/signature potentially predictive of response to IFNalpha therapy for CHB in this study. RNA was extracted from pairedliver tissues for gene expression analysis. The gene expression profiles of seven paired liver biopsy samples of IFNalpha responders before/after treatment and other 3 pre- treatment samples were obtained by Affymatrix U133plus2 microarray. We also pooled samples of 11 responders and 11 non-responders to perform affymatrix EXON ST 1.0 array. This dataset is part of the TransQST collection.
Project description:With 350 million carriers worldwide who may suffer from serious sequelae, including hepatocellular carcinoma, chronic hepatitis B virus (CHB) infection remains an important health issue. Current antiviral therapies hardly eradicate the virus. Therefore, there are still imperative need to develop new therapeutic strategies and predictors for treatment response to cure the disease and avoid futile treatment. By taking the advantage of having the paired liver biopsy samples of IFNalpha responders before/after treatment and pretreatment samples from responders and non-responders, we could characterize the intrahepatic expression profiles associated with necroinflammatory activity and the profiles/signature potentially predictive of response to IFNalpha therapy for CHB in this study.
Project description:With 350 million carriers worldwide who may suffer from serious sequelae, including hepatocellular carcinoma, chronic hepatitis B virus (CHB) infection remains an important health issue. Current antiviral therapies hardly eradicate the virus. Therefore, there are still imperative need to develop new therapeutic strategies and predictors for treatment response to cure the disease and avoid futile treatment. By taking the advantage of having the paired liver biopsy samples of IFNalpha responders before/after treatment and pretreatment samples from responders and non-responders, we could characterize the intrahepatic expression profiles associated with necroinflammatory activity and the profiles/signature potentially predictive of response to IFNalpha therapy for CHB in this study.
Project description:The natural course of chronic hepatitis B (CHB) infection and treatment response are determined mainly by the genomic characteristics of the individual. We investigated liver gene expression profiles to reveal the molecular basis associated with chronic hepatitis B and IFN-alpha (IFNα) treatment response in CHB patients. Expression profiles were compared between seven paired liver biopsy samples taken before and 6 months after successful IFNα treatment or between pretreatment biopsy samples of 11 IFNα responders and 11 non-responders. A total of 132 differentially up-regulated and 39 down-regulated genes were identified in the pretreated livers of CHB patients. The up-regulated genes were mainly related to cell proliferation and immune response, with IFNγ and B cell signatures significantly enriched. Lower intrahepatic HBV pregenomic RNA levels and 25 predictive genes were identified in IFNα responders. The predictive gene set in responders significantly overlapped with the up-regulated genes associated with the pretreated livers of CHB patients. The mechanisms responsible for IFNα treatment responses are different between HBV and HCV patients. HBV infection evokes significant immune responses even in chronic infection. The up-regulated genes are predictive of responsiveness to IFNα therapy, as are lower intrahepatic levels of HBV pregenomic RNA and pre-activated host immune responses.
Project description:Immune-mediated liver damage is the driver of disease progression in patients with chronic Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection. Liver damage is an antigen-independent process caused by bystander activation of CD8 T cells and NK cells. How bystander lymphocyte activation is initiated in chronic hepatitis B (CHB) patients remains unclear. Periods of liver damage, called hepatic flares, occur unpredictably, making early events difficult to capture. To address this obstacle, we longitudinally sampled the liver of CHB patients stopping antiviral therapy and analyzed immune composition and activation using flow cytometry and single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq). At 4 weeks after stopping therapy, HBV replication rebounded but no liver damage was detectable. There were no changes in cell frequencies at viral rebound. ScRNA-seq revealed upregulation of IFN stimulated genes (ISGs) and pro-inflammatory cytokine MIF at viral rebound in patients that go on to develop hepatic flares 6 – 18 w after stopping therapy. The type I IFN signature was only detectable within the liver and neither IFN-α/β or ISG induction could be detected in the peripheral blood. In vitro experiments confirmed the type I IFN-dependent ISG profile whereas MIF was induced primarily by IL-12. MIF exposure further amplified inflammatory cytokine production by myeloid cells. Our data show that innate immune activation is detectable in the liver before clinically significant liver damage is evident. The combination of type I IFN and enhanced cytokine production upon MIF exposure represent the earliest immunological triggers of lymphocyte bystander activation observed in hepatic flares associated with chronic HBV infection.
Project description:This SuperSeries is composed of the SubSeries listed below. Refer to individual Series This dataset is part of the TransQST collection.