Hepatitis C breakthrough may save lives

Jul 18, 2005, 4:44 GMT

New York - Scientists have for the first time produced an infectious form of the hepatitis C virus in the laboratory.

It might sound risky, but the breakthrough is expected to lead to more effective treatments that could save millions of lives.

Hepatitis C, which like HIV is spread by blood and body fluids, can lead to chronic liver disease, cancer and death. But it can take many years to develop, and 80 per cent of infected people show no symptoms.

An estimated 170 million people around the world are affected by the disease.

Professor Charles Rice, from Rockefeller University in New York, who led the new research published today in the journal Science, said: "The inability to reproduce aspects of the hepatitis C virus life cycle in cell culture has slowed research progress on this important human pathogen."

Like all viruses, hepatitis C (HCV) cannot replicate by itself. Instead it takes over the machinery of a host cell to make copies of itself. But much about the life cycle of HCV remains poorly understood because scientists have been unable to reproduce an infectious form of the virus they can observe in cell cultures.

The virus enters liver cells before unloading genetic material and proteins.

HCV carries its genetic information in RNA, not DNA. This is separated from the protein, copied, and joined with new protein components before being released to infect other cells.

The scientists named their infectious cell culture virus HCVcc.

Already, it is yielding new knowledge about the hepatitis C virus. In separate experiments, the researchers used HCVcc to confirm that a molecule which sits on the surface of human cells plays a crucial role in allowing the virus in.