Hepatitis B Virus–Host Interactions: Insights into Pathogenesis, Diagnosis and Treatment
A special issue of Cells (ISSN 2073-4409). This special issue belongs to the section "Cellular Pathology".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 August 2026 | Viewed by 248
Editors
Interests: hepatitis B virus; blood virome; emerging infectious diseases
Interests: viral metagenomics; human genomics; bioinformatics; hepatitis viruses
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection remains a major global health burden and a leading cause of chronic liver disease, cirrhosis, and hepatocellular carcinoma. Achieving better risk stratification, earlier diagnosis, and—critically—a functional cure requires deeper insight into bidirectional HBV–host interactions. These interactions also unfold at the population level: host genetics and immunity, transmission networks, migration, and vaccination or treatment pressures shape HBV evolution and diversity, influencing the emergence and regional distribution of genotypes, subgenotypes, and variants. Clarifying these links strengthens prevention efforts (including monitoring vaccine escape and transmission), improves diagnostic robustness across genotypes and clinically relevant mutants, and informs treatment selection, resistance surveillance, and clinical outcome prediction.
This Special Issue, “Hepatitis B Virus–Host Interactions: Insights into Pathogenesis, Diagnosis and Treatment,” welcomes original research, reviews, and communications that connect mechanistic insights to clinical impact. We encourage submissions on innate and adaptive immunity, immune evasion, host restriction/susceptibility factors, viral and human genomics, bioinformatics, viral metagenomics and the blood virome, biomarkers, and emerging therapies (including host-targeted approaches and immunotherapies). Studies incorporating limited clinical cohorts and molecular epidemiology are welcome, provided they are anchored in viral and host determinants and when they advance the cellular mechanistic understanding of prevention, diagnosis, or treatment across diverse settings and patient populations worldwide.
Dr. Mahmoud Reza Pourkarim
Dr. Xiaofeng Fan
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- hepatitis B virus (HBV)
- HBV–host interactions
- genotypes and subgenotypes
- viral variants
- molecular epidemiology
- viral genomics
- immune evasion
- biomarkers
- diagnostics
- antiviral therapy
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