The hepatitis C virus (HCV) infects more than 170 million people worldwide and leads to both acute and chronic liver diseases. Since its discovery several decades ago, the insidious human pathogen has stymied the quest for anti-viral therapies by refusing to reproduce in test tubes for more than a few hours or days, denying scientists an efficient virus production and infection system for experimental research. Now, in a landmark study by Florida State University biologists that could bolster the development of anti-viral therapies for HCV –– as well as for related RNA viruses such as West Nile and influenza –– Assistant Professor Hengli Tang and doctoral student/co-author Heather B. Nelson have discovered the molecular mechanism that inhibits HCV replication in vitro after its host cells become crowded and stopped dividing.
