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

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.