Unraveling the liver antiviral immunity in functional cure of chronic hepatitis B using scRNAseq

More than 250 million people are infected with hepatitis B virus (HBV) worldwide, despite availability of an effective prophylactic vaccine1,2. Although current standard of care such as nucleos(t)ide analogs (NA) and interferon-alfa (PEG-IFN) are successful in controlling viral replication, these therapies very rarely result in complete cure due to persistence of HBV covalently closed circular DNA (cccDNA) in infected hepatocytes3. Thus, CHB patients remain at high risk of developing cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma2.