γδ T cells in liver diseases

Abstract

γδ T cells display unique developmental, distributional, and functional patterns and can rapidly respond to various insults and contribute to diverse diseases. Different subtypes of γδ T cells are produced in the thymus prior to their migration to peripheral tissues. γδ T cells are enriched in the liver and exhibit liver-specific features. Accumulating evidence reveals that γδ T cells play important roles in liver infection, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, autoimmune hepatitis, liver fibrosis and cirrhosis, and liver cancer and regeneration. In this study, we review the properties of hepatic γδ T cells and summarize the roles of γδ T cells in liver diseases. We believe that determining the properties and functions of γδ T cells in liver diseases enhances our understanding of the pathogenesis of liver diseases and is useful for the design of novel γδ T cell-based therapeutic regimens for liver diseases.

Keywords

γδT cells / liver infection / non-alcoholic fatty liver disease / autoimmune hepatitis / liver fibrosis and cirrhosis / liver cancer / liver regeneration

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Anhui Natural Science Foundation (No. 1708085QH183), Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 81302863, 31390433, and 91542000), and the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (973 Program, No. 2013CB944902).

Compliance with ethics guidelines

Xuefu Wang and Zhigang Tian declare no conflicts of in terests. This manuscript is a review article and does not involve a research protocol requiring approval by the relevant institutional review board or ethics committee.

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