Estrogen Regulation of Cholangiopathies

Work stemming from my post-doctoral fellowship aims to understand how estrogen signaling regulates damage in models of primary biliary cholangitis (PBC) and primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC). This work was originally supported by an AASLD Foundation Pilot Award, that was supported by my mentor Dr. Heather Francis. Together, Dr. Francis and I aimed to understand how estrogen signaling regulates biliary damage, inflammation, and fibrosis in PBC. Our preliminary work in this realm is still ongoing. In support of these efforts, we published a review that discusses how estrogen signaling may contribute to sexually dimorphic outcomes in PBC and PSC, which can be found to the left.

Further preliminary work from my lab has found that estrogen signaling exhibits sexually dimorphic regulation of damage in male versus female models of PSC. I have found that targeting specific estrogen receptors may have differential outcomes in male versus female PSC models. For this reason, I am further testing how manipulation of estrogen receptors may serve as potential therapeutics for PBC or PSC, and the signaling mechanism by which we see varying outcomes in male compared to female counterparts. This exciting work is still ongoing, but I am hopeful that it will contribute to our understanding of the biological basis for sexual dimorphism in cholangiopathies.