University of Saskatchewan Researchers Develop New Vaccine Candidate Against Hepatitis C

Researchers at the University of Saskatchewan’s Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization (VIDO) have developed a vaccine candidate for hepatitis C, leading to hope in the fight against a disease for which no vaccines are yet available.VIDO is the first in Canada to show that this vaccination technique may be effective against HCV. The study was published in this month’s Journal of General Virology. The team, funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and the Canadian Network for Vaccines and Immunotherapeutics (CANVAC), produced a vaccine candidate that decreased the amount of a carrier virus expressing hepatitis C virus (HCV) protein in mice by 100,000 times compared to the control.