Prevention of lymphotropic hepatitis C virus infection by blocking antibodies

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

We measured the binding ability of chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) to the lymphocyte cell line HPB-Ma in the patient's serum, and found that it was one of the major determinant of interferon therapy by the prospective study of 152 consecutively enrolled patients (J Hepatology). As the HCV loose their infectivity by neutralized antibodies, we measured the quantity of antibody-free virion in the serum, and determined the amino acid sequence of hypervariable region of envelope 2 protein for the 38 patients ; 22 genotype 1b and 16 genotype 2a/2b. We found the consensus sequence of hypervariable region in the genotype 1b patients with a small amount of antibody-free virion and the all patients with a genotype 2a/2b infection regardless of the quantity of antibody-free virion, but not in the genotype 1b patients with a high amount of antibody-free virions (J Med Virol).To determine the cell tropism of HCV, we established the measurement method of HCV that bound to the hepatocyte cell line HuH7. The HCV in the majority of patients could bind to the both cell lines HPB-Ma and HuH7, while the HCV in some patients could bind only to the hepatocyte cell line HuH7. There are no HCV that could bind only to the lymphocyte cell line HPB-Ma. The interferon treatment efficacy was well related not to the binding ability to the hepatocyte cell line HuH7 but to the lymphocyte cell line HPB-Ma. Now, we are examining the hypervariable region to analyze the cell tropism and the blocking antibody against the lymphocyte infection.