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Collaborative Research Centre 1700 (CRC 1700)
"Immune regulation in the liver: from homeostasis to disease"
A multitude of antigens and signals derived from metabolism, nutrition and microorganisms reach the liver via the portal vein and via the mucosal surface of the biliary tract. As an aggressive immune response to all these antigens would cause severe tissue damage, the liver has evolved effective mechanisms to control inflammation and induce immune tolerance. However, hepatic immune tolerance might come at the expense of a survival benefit for cancer cells and hepatotropic viruses by preventing their recognition and elimination by the immune system.
The central hypothesis of CRC 1700 is that the regulation of immune responses is a key function of the liver that determines organismal health. We propose that faulty orchestration of cellular interaction and signalling within the hepatic microenvironment can lead either to immune-mediated inflammation and autoimmune disease, or to persistent infections and cancer. To understanding the mechanisms of hepatic immune regulation that govern the development of tolerance or immune activation this CRC brings together clinician scientists, medical scientists and expert computational scientists in an interdisciplinary and synergistic environment structured in Project Area A and Project Area B.
Kick-off for the new Junior Research Group – Hao Huang will join the CRC consortium in January 2026
The new Junior Research Group Leader Hao Huang earned his bachelor’s degree in Pharmacy from Wuhan University in China and then pursued a master’s in Biomedical Sciences at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. Following his master’s thesis at Charité in Berlin, he was admitted to the PhD program at the Max Delbrück Center in Berlin and carried out his doctoral research at the Center for Immunology in Marseille-Luminy (2017-2019) and Center for Regenerative Therapy Dresden (2019-2021). In 2022, he joined Elvira Mass’s laboratory (LIMES Institute, Bonn) for his postdoctoral research.
The scientific focus of Hao Huang lies on understanding the diverse and dynamic roles of macrophages in various organs, with the ultimate goal of harnessing their functions for disease modulation. The liver hosts several macrophage populations with Kupffer cells (KCs) being the most abundant. Hao Huang recently identified that offspring KCs are developmentally programmed during gestation by maternal obesity and serve as intergenerational messengers transferring fatty liver disease risk from obese mothers to their offspring.
In CRC1700, he will investigate newly identified macrophage populations in the liver, and elucidate their functions in homeostasis, as well as in autoimmune liver diseases, such as primary sclerosing cholangitis.
We are very much looking forward to working and networking with Hao and warmly welcome him to our CRC.