Theme 2: Intrahepatic Hepatitis B &
Theme 2.2: Identifying and characterising intrahepatic immune cells in CHB

Dr John Connolly is the theme leader for theme 2 of the LCG (Intrahepatic Hepatitis B) and heads the section on “Identifying and characterizing intrahepatic immune cells in CHB”.  Dr Connolly has vast experience in human immunology and is focused in studying immune modulation during chronic viral infection and therapy. His other research interests are immunotherapy and immune-metabolism.

This theme focuses on a comprehensive evaluation of intrahepatic biology from the same CHB phenotypically identified patients from theme 1 (n=250), through liver biopsy (IRB approval 2000/00828 for 4 liver cores per patient), thus take a unique multi-dimensional approach to understanding intrahepatic events. Liver biopsy assignment: core 1 – single cell analysis; core 2 – proteomics/immune cell isolation; core 3 – HBV virology; core 4 – routine processing for histology report. 

In this theme, the liver cells and PBMCs will be used to implement an integrated approach of transcriptomic and chromatin accessibility analysis to evaluate the transcription profile, and functional gene regulatory networks that modulate the phenotypes of Hepatitis B.

Dr Jayantha is the Co-Investigator responsible for proteomics-centric discovery of surrogate circulating protein markers for CHB, analysis of dysregulation of hepatic proteome/PTMs associated with different CHB phenotypes and characterizing previously identified novel drug targets.