Arielle Klepper, MD, PhD
Assistant Professor
Medicine
School of Medicine

Her clinical practice spans gastroenterology and hepatology, with a particular focus on alcohol-associated liver disease. She cares for patients in the HALT Clinic, a multidisciplinary program dedicated to the management and treatment of alcohol-associated liver disease.

Dr. Klepper's research seeks to understand why immune responses to pathogens sometimes fail to provide effective protection and instead contribute to disease. Her laboratory studies liver disease to understand the mechanisms that shape antigen-specific humoral immunity, integrating high-resolution antigen discovery with immune profiling, B-cell receptor analysis, and functional antibody studies. Her current work focuses on host-microbial interactions in cirrhosis, where she studies how microbial exposure, B-cell differentiation, and antibody responses contribute to immune dysfunction and adverse outcomes. She established the Ascites Characterization and Evaluation Study (ACES) to investigate these processes directly within the human peritoneal compartment. Her work also uses proteome-wide phage display to investigate antiviral and autoreactive antibody responses in autoimmune liver disease. Together, these studies aim to define the mechanisms that distinguish protective, ineffective, and pathogenic humoral immune responses in human disease.

• Transcriptomic profiling of blood from autoimmune hepatitis patients reveals potential mechanisms with implications for management.
  PloS one 2022 Tana MM, Klepper A, Lyden A, Pisco AO, Phelps M, McGee B, Green K, Feng S, DeRisi J, Crawford ED, Lammert CS
• S305 Improving Identification of Patients Meeting Lynch Syndrome Testing Criteria in Endoscopy.
  The American Journal of Gastroenterology 2021 Adam Blaisdell, Laurel Hochstetler, Arielle Klepper, Colin Feuille, Bing Zhang, Amie Blanco, Jonathan Terdiman, Aparajita Singh
• A subset of liver resident natural killer cells is expanded in hepatitis C-infected patients with better liver function.
  Scientific reports 2021 Doyle EH, Aloman C, El-Shamy A, Eng F, Rahman A, Klepper AL, Haydel B, Florman SS, Fiel MI, Schiano T, Branch AD
• Individual liver plasmacytoid dendritic cells are capable of producing IFNα and multiple additional cytokines during chronic HCV infection.
  PLoS pathogens 2019 Doyle EH, Rahman A, Aloman C, Klepper AL, El-Shamy A, Eng F, Rocha C, Kim S, Haydel B, Florman SS, Fiel MI, Schiano T, Branch AD
• Newly discovered hepatitis C virus minicores circulate in human blood.
  Hepatology communications 2017 Eng FJ, El-Shamy A, Doyle EH, Klepper A, Muerhoff AS, Branch AD
• Hepatitis C virus double-stranded RNA is the predominant form in human liver and in interferon-treated cells.
  Hepatology (Baltimore, Md.) 2016 Klepper A, Eng FJ, Doyle EH, El-Shamy A, Rahman AH, Fiel MI, Avino GC, Lee M, Ye F, Roayaie S, Bansal MB, MacDonald MR, Schiano TD, Branch AD
• A cell culture system for distinguishing hepatitis C viruses with and without liver cancer-related mutations in the viral core gene.
  Journal of hepatology 2015 El-Shamy A, Eng FJ, Doyle EH, Klepper AL, Sun X, Sangiovanni A, Iavarone M, Colombo M, Schwartz RE, Hoshida Y, Branch AD
• Macrophages and the Viral Dissemination Super Highway.
  EC microbiology 2015 Klepper A, Branch AD
• High mobility group box-1 (HMGB1) participates in the pathogenesis of alcoholic liver disease (ALD).
  The Journal of biological chemistry 2014 Ge X, Antoine DJ, Lu Y, Arriazu E, Leung TM, Klepper AL, Branch AD, Fiel MI, Nieto N
• Building failure into successful team science: highlights of the second SINAInnovations event.
  Disease models & mechanisms 2014 Klepper A, Pendleton M
• Sa1965 Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) Double-Stranded RNA is Abundant and May Be an Important Viral Reservoir in Persistence and Relapse.
  Gastroenterology 2012 Arielle L. Klepper, Francis J. Eng, James D. Dieterich, Jose Walewski, Julio A. Gutierrez, Myron E. Schwartz, Daniel S. Fierer, Thomas Schiano, Andrea D. Branch
• Cross-genotypic polyclonal anti-HCV antibodies from human ascitic fluid.
  Journal of virological methods 2010 Gutierrez JA, Klepper AL, Garber J, Walewski JL, Bateman K, Khaitova V, Syder A, Tscherne DM, Gauthier A, Jefferson D, Rice CM, Schiano TD, Branch AD
• Human peritoneal macrophages from ascitic fluid can be infected by a broad range of HIV-1 isolates.
  Journal of acquired immune deficiency syndromes (1999) 2010 Chang TL, Klepper A, Ding J, Garber J, Rapista A, Mosoian A, Hubner W, Gutierrez J, Walewski J, Abergel J, Schiano T, Branch A
• Internal initiation stimulates production of p8 minicore, a member of a newly discovered family of hepatitis C virus core protein isoforms.
  Journal of virology 2009 Eng FJ, Walewski JL, Klepper AL, Fishman SL, Desai SM, McMullan LK, Evans MJ, Rice CM, Branch AD
• Liver fibrosis during an outbreak of acute hepatitis C virus infection in HIV-infected men: a prospective cohort study.
  The Journal of infectious diseases 2008 Fierer DS, Uriel AJ, Carriero DC, Klepper A, Dieterich DT, Mullen MP, Thung SN, Fiel MI, Branch AD
• Cox-2 is regulated by Toll-like receptor-4 (TLR4) signaling: Role in proliferation and apoptosis in the intestine.
  Gastroenterology 2006 Fukata M, Chen A, Klepper A, Krishnareddy S, Vamadevan AS, Thomas LS, Xu R, Inoue H, Arditi M, Dannenberg AJ, Abreu MT