Cellular immunity and genetic restriction of Influenza, Hepatitis C virus infection and Hepatitis B associated heptocellular carcinoma.

人类感染、癌症发展和病程主要受T细胞反应的影响。虽然强大和适当的T细胞反应对宿主有利，但弱的或不适当的反应可能无效，甚至产生有害的影响。许多因素影响T细胞对病毒感染或癌症发展的反应质量，其中最主要的是感染部位的微环境、受影响的细胞类型以及在感染的情况下，病毒的变异性。通过了解在一些不同的病毒感染和病毒相关癌症中有效控制T细胞反应所需的关键因素，特别是与乙肝病毒相关的肝癌，我们的目标是确定增强和控制免疫反应的靶点，以此作为改善几种重要人类疾病预后的方法。虽然我的小组主要关注T细胞反应，但小组的一部分专注于重要的抗病毒限制因子IFITM3，已知该因子可限制包括甲型流感病毒、艾滋病毒和丙型肝炎病毒在内的15种RNA病毒，但限制机制仍不清楚。由于其与IFITM家族其他成员的高度同源性，关于IFITM3的确凿数据很少发表。IFITM3内的单核苷酸多态(SNP)已知可防止其病毒限制，但其机制仍不清楚。这种有趣的蛋白质给我们留下了几个悬而未决的问题，我们的目标是使用新的试剂来表征这种蛋白质，以阐明病毒限制发生的机制。

Human infections, cancer development and the course of disease are mainly influenced by T cell responses. While a robust and appropriate T cell response is beneficial to the host, a weak or inappropriate response can be ineffective or even have a detrimental effect. Numerous factors influence the quality of the T cell response to viral infections or cancer development, predominant among them being the microenvironment of the infection site, the type of cells affected and in the case of infection, the variability of the virus. By understanding the key factors required for efficient control by the T cell response in a number of different viral infections and viral associated cancers, in particular HBV associated HCC, we aim to identify targets to augment and control the immune response as a way of improving the outcome of in several important human diseases. While my group's main focus is T cell responses, a subset of the group focus on the important anti-viral restriction factor IFITM3, which is known to restrict >15 RNA viruses including Influenza A virus, HIV and Hepatitis C virus, however the mechanism of restriction is still unknown. Little conclusive data on IFITM3 is published due to its high homology to other IFITM family members. A single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) within IFITM3 is known to prevent its viral restriction but again the mechanism for this is unknown. This interesting protein leaves us with several unanswered questions and we aim to characterise this protein using novel reagents in order to elucidate the mechanism by which viral restriction occurs.