4Institute for Ageing and Health, Newcastle University,

yBoth authors contributed equally. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Biliary epithelial cells (BEC) are important targets in some liver diseases, including acute allograft rejection. Although some injured BEC die, many can survive in function compromised states of senescence or pheno-typic de-differentiation. This study was performed to examine changes in the phenotype of BEC during acute liver allograft rejection and the mechanism driving these changes. Liver allograft sections showed a positive correlation (p < 0.0013) between increasing T cell mediated acute rejection and the number of BE