A new strategy for HCV vaccine development
December 2020
Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research, Braunschweig, Germany(1)
TWINCORE Center of Experimental and Clinical Infection Research, Hannover, Germany(2)
TWINCORE Center of Experimental and Clinical Infection Research, Hannover, Germany(2)
One reason why no vaccine against the hepatitis C virus (HCV) has been found to date is that there are numerous virus variants, some of which differ by more than 30% from each other. In this study, the researchers have succeeded in developing a test system that precisely measures the protective effect of an immune response against the large spectrum of HCV pathogens. First, the researchers first examined neutralising antibodies from the blood of 104 HCV-positive patients. Next, they used bioinformatics methods to divide the viruses into six different groups, known as clusters. Although there is no obvious genetic connection between the viruses in the same neutralisation clusters, they behave very similarly in terms of their susceptibility to antibodies. Thus, it is sufficient to use a test virus from each of the clusters as an example to measure how well the antibodies protect against different HCV variants. Furthermore, vaccination against representatives of the virus clusters may be sensible to build up a broadly protective immune response.
Hepatitis C reference viruses highlight potent antibody responses and diverse viral functional interactions with neutralising antibodies
Alice C. McHardy(1), Thomas Pietschmann(2)
Added on: 05-11-2021
[1] https://gut.bmj.com/content/early/2020/12/14/gutjnl-2020-321190[2] https://www.bionity.com/en/news/1169981/a-precise-measure-of-protective-immunity.html
