Grant: Operating Grant

Hepatitis C virus (HCV), leads to serious and permanent liver damage. Late stage disease due to HCV is the leading cause of liver transplantation in North America. The disease afflicts 175 million people worldwide, including 1-2 % of the North American population. There is no vaccine or immunotherapy currently available for the treatment of HCV infection. A combination of pegylated alpha-interferon and ribavirin is being used to treat HCV infected patients, but this treatment is not adequate, only works in a minority of patients, and has serious side effects associated with it. Therefore, there is a tremendous need to develop new therapeutic approaches and vaccines against this devastating virus. The focus of this project is to study immune responses against HCV and mechanisms how these immune responses are modified in HCV infection, so that novel immunotherapeutic and vaccine strategies can be designed and investigated. In our studies we have recently established mouse models of HCV infection. In the proposed project we will investigate the components of successful immune responses capable of clearing HCV, and study how immune responses are modulated in HCV infection, using cell culture and mouse models. This project will contribute significantly to the knowledge and understanding of immunity against chronic HCV infection and in the development of immunotherapy and vaccine candidates for the prevention and treatment of HCV infection worldwide.