You can find out more about our research interests below
The vertebrate liver is incredibly important and is thought to have more than 500 unique functions. Our group is interested in bile ducts, tubes within liver that are necessary for normal liver function. We have three main areas of research:
How do ducts form and grow in early life?
In the liver, bile ducts form from a group of cells known as hepatoblasts. To form a duct, hepatoblasts form a transient structure known as the ductal plate that further develops into the biliary tree. Using a combination of human genetics and transgenic animal models, we know that a small number of signals are necessary for bile duct cells (cholangiocytes) to form. What is not very clear is what happens to these cells once they have been generated and what signals drives them to form ducts.
What signals promote the repair of damaged ducts in the adult and where do they come from?
Blocked or injured ducts can result in damage to the liver. Because of this, the liver has evolved a mechanism to make new ducts - but this leads to particular challenges as a new duct needs to connect to the biliary tree, be the correct length & thickness and also needs to serve the right part of the liver. We are investigating how duct cells re-enter a proliferative phase following injury and ask how these cells build a new duct in the adult and how these duct cells interact with their microenvironment.
What is happening at the interface between duct regeneration and cancer?
Patients with underlying bile duct disease are much more likely to develop bile duct cancer (cholangiocarcinoma). We want to understand how the regenerative microenvironment is used by early cancers to establish themselves in the liver and how they begin to grow. We hope that by understanding this process we will be able to prevent the transition from disease into cancer in these patients.
