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  • Year in Review
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HBV in 2016

Global and immunotherapeutic insights into hepatitis B

The burden of HBV infection remains high and new strategies to improve HBV vaccination and therapy are needed. Key research in 2016 highlights the efficacy of current approaches and proposes new concepts for some of the immunological defects that need to be overcome for HBV functional cure.

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Figure 1: Presentation of HBV antigens by myeloid cells or hepatocytes triggers HBV-specific T-cell deletion or inactivation.

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Acknowledgements

M.K.M. is supported by a Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator Award and a Medical Research Council project grant. A.B. is supported by a Singapore Translational Research (STaR) Investigator Award (NMRC/STaR/013/2012).

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Correspondence to Mala K. Maini.

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Competing interests

M.K.M. lab has received research funding from Gilead and Roche, and has served as a consultant and on advisory boards for BMS, Galapagos, Gilead, ITS, Medimmune, Roche and Transgene. A.B. collaborates and receives research support from Gilead. He acted as a consultant and served on the advisory boards of Abivax, Gilead, Humabs BioMed, Jansseen-Cilag, Medimmune. A.B. is also a co-founder of LION TCR, a biotech company developing T-cell receptors for treatment of virus-related cancers and chronic viral diseases.

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Maini, M., Bertoletti, A. Global and immunotherapeutic insights into hepatitis B. Nat Rev Gastroenterol Hepatol 14, 71–72 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrgastro.2016.196

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