Cell therapy for the treatment of children’s liver diseases

Celine’s research has mostly been revolving around the analysis of liver metabolism. She did her PhD in Grenoble (France), studying the effects of hypoxia on liver metabolism and bioenergetics. Her first postdoc took place in the Hepatology lab, at the University of Edinburgh where she obtained her first grant to establish methods to precondition cell lines to be used in bioartificial liver support systems. After a year at the Cancer Research UK centre at the Western General, she was recruited to the Centre for Regenerative Medicine, where she worked on the differentiation of human embryonic stem cells to produce truly functional hepatocyte-like cells. This project was funded by Geron Corp, the American pioneer company working on human embryonic stem cell, which then hired her in 2009 to develop her research with them in California. Coming back to Scotland in 2011, she joined Herriot Watt University to undertake Nanotoxicology studies with Vicky Stone, analysing the effects of nanoparticles on hepatocyte metabolism and bioenergetics. She left this project in 2012 to come and take a position as Senior Liver Cell Scientist in the Hepatocyte Transplantation Group, at King’s College Hospital, in London. Celine is now Head of Quality and Stem Cell Research in the group, as well as Senior Lecturer with King’s College London. Her work focuses on the development of new treatments for children's liver diseases and their clinical applications. Her project on novel hepatocyte microbeads has attracted NIHR i4i funding and led to the submission of a patent application. The success of that work led to a £1.7M MRC DPFS grant which is enabling the team to start a clinical trial and test these novel microbeads in children with acute liver disease.