Grant: Master's Award: Canada Graduate Scholarships

Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) is a major infectious agent, infecting over 170 million people worldwide, including approximately 250,000 Canadians. Infection with the virus can lead to liver disease, including hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Currently the only available treatment involves extensive use of the drugs ribavirin and interferon-alpha; however, this therapy is not successful in all patients. Treatment of HCV is currently transitioning to the use of new antiviral agents, but they lose their effectiveness over time. The virus can eventually mutate and some of these viral variants can survive even in the presence of the drugs. The goal of this study is to determine how these mutations affect the ability of HCV to replicate and spread both in the presence and absence of the new antiviral drugs. We propose using cell-based experiments to achieve this goal. Success of this goal will ultimately lead to design of different compounds with a high tolerance to resistance mutations as well as sustained effectiveness against current mutations.