US scientists have been able to create infectious hepatitis C in the lab for the first time, offering renewed hope of drugs to beat the virus. Hepatitis C is a major cause of chronic and sometimes fatal liver disease, affecting 170 million people worldwide. The virus, HCV, is carried in and can be passed on via the blood. Currently, it is treated with a combination of two drugs, but only 40% of patients respond to this therapy. Like all viruses, hepatitis C cannot replicate by itself. It takes over the machinery of the host cell. However, much about the life cycle of the virus remains poorly understood because, until now, scientists have been unable to reproduce an infectious form of HCV that they can observe and experiment on in the lab. “This system lays the foundation for future test tube studies of the virus life cycle and may help in the development of new drugs for combating HCV,” said researcher Dr Charles Rice from the Infectious Diseases Unit at Rockefeller University.
