Elucidation of host factors and the associated pathways responsible for cellular permissiveness to hepatitis E virus replication and identification of the potential inhibitors

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Hepatitis E virus (HEV) is increasingly recognized as the leading cause of acute hepatitis. In immunocompromised patients, HEV can cause chronic hepatitis. Currently, there is no specific anti-HEV drug available. Targeting cellular factors associated with HEV replication can be one of the methods to develop specific anti-HEV drug. In this context, cell culture is required. Subclones of PLC/PRF/5 cells have variable permissiveness to HEV replication even when inoculated with the same virus, suggesting that aside from viral factor itself, cellular factors might be involved in determining host susceptibility to HEV replication, and therefore, can be the target for development of specific anti-HEV drug.Subclones of a single PLC/PRF/5 cell line demonstrated up to 10,000-folds difference in the permissiveness to HEV replication. Based on the results of RNA microarray analysis of highly permissive and poorly permissive PLC/PRF/5 subclones, 15 upregulated genes and 15 downregulated genes were selected. Small interfering RNA (siRNA)-mediated gene silencing was performed on the upregulated and downregulated genes, followed by screening using eHEV-nanoKAZ (Primadharsini et al., J Virol 2022) and evaluation in cell culture. Silencing of any of four of upregulated genes in highly permissive subclone resulted in decreased HEV replication efficiency, while silencing of any of four downregulated genes in the poorly permissive subclone resulted in slightly increased HEV replication efficiency.