Analysis of the innate immune responses in the liver of patients with chronic hepatitis C following liver transplantation to develop a novel immunotherapy for the recurrent hepatitis C infection

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(1) Natural killer (NK) cell subsets in the liver of patients with recurrent hepatitis C following liver transplantationHuman NK cells can be divided into two subsets based on their cell-surface density of CD56 - CD56^(+bright) and CD56^(+dim) - each with distinct phenotypic properties. We investigated the NK cell subsets in the liver of patients with recurrent hepatitis C following living-donor liver transplantation (LDLT). The patients with chronic hepatitis C (CHC) and the donors for LDLT were also investigated as controls. We revealed that the CD56^(+bright) subset was significantly decreased in the liver of patients with recurrent hepatitis C than that in the patients with CHC and the normal donors. The expression of an activation marker CD69 on the CD56^(+dim) subset was significantly increased in the liver of LDLT. Our results suggest that further examination of the status of intrahepatic NK cell subsets might provide a new insight into the mechanism of rapid progression of recurrent hepatitis C infection.(2) Gene expression profiles in the liver of patients with recurrent hepatitis C following liver transplantationWe investigated the gene expression profiles in the liver of patients with recurrent hepatitis C after LDLT using liver biopsy samples. However, we could not find any significant changes in the gene expression profiles among the recurrent hepatitis C patients and CHC patients yet.(3) NK and NKT cells in the liver of patients with chronic hepatitis C before and after interferon plus ribavirin therapyPrevious studies have revealed that functional impairment of NK and NKT cells might be associated with the persistence of hepatitis C virus (HCV). However, the involvement of these cells, which predominate in the liver, in therapeutic HCV clearance is still unclear. We found a close relationship between the significant increase of intrahepatic NK/NKT cells and sustained HCV clearance in CHC patients treated with interferon-a plus ribavirin therapy.