Jelena Mann PhD

Jelena Mann, PhD has liver fibrosis as a final common pathway of liver injury irrespective of aetiology. It is characterised by progressive replacement of normal hepatic tissue with collagen-rich scar tissue and is responsible for around 1.5 million death per annum worldwide. There is no proven effective therapeutics for fibrosis, the only treatment available for chronic liver disease is transplantation which is limited by the availability of donor organs.

Mann is interested in delineating epigenetic signalling pathways that trigger fibrogenesis and in doing so, discovering molecular control of fibrogenesis and associated signalling pathways that can be targeted with new as well as existing drugs. More recently we have also embarked on studies that test the ability of environmental factors to affect the transgenerational inheritance of predisposition to liver fibrosis. Adaptation to environmental insults is critical for ensuring fitness and survival of the species, however, it is currently not clear if a predisposition to the development of fibrosis exists or indeed if the existence of the disease in previous generations alters such predisposition.

We have published the first report of the transgenerational epigenetic transmission of protection against liver fibrosis which provides evidence of heritable mechanisms for the rapid adaptation of animals to environmental insults. The lab is now carrying out the further characterisation of this newly reported phenomenon and its impact on the liver disease of various aetiology.