News Section | Virology
Researchers Develop New Vaccine Candidate Against Hepatitis C
Researchers at the University of Saskatchewan’s Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization (VIDO) have developed a vaccine candidate for hepatitis C, leading to hope in the fight against a disease for which no vaccines are yet available. The study was published in this month’s Journal of General Virology.
The team, funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and the Canadian Network for Vaccines and Immunotherapeutics (CANVAC), produced a vaccine candidate that decreased the amount of a carrier virus expressing hepatitis C virus (HCV) protein in mice by 100,000 times compared to the control.
“This technique uses the body’s own cells, called dendritic cells, to vaccinate against hepatitis C,” said Dr. Bhagirath Singh, Scientific Director of the CIHR Institute of Infection and Immunity.
Dendritic cells are key components of the immune system, activating and shaping the immune response. “The vaccine reduced the amount of hepatitis C protein in a highly significant manner,” he said. “This offers a very promising approach to prevent liver disease caused by the virus and to
ultimately eliminate it from the body.”
About 20 per cent of people who contract HCV overcome the virus on their own. For those who develop chronic hepatitis, the immune system cannot clear the infection.
“In patients with chronic hepatitis C, there is evidence that the function of their dendritic cells is altered,” said Sylvia van den Hurk, senior VIDO scientist and member of the research team that developed the vaccine candidate.
The researchers exposed dendritic cells in vitro to a HCV protein. The cells were also exposed to a strong immune stimulator to increase the immune response and then injected into mice as a vaccine. Because HCV does not infect mice, mice were challenged with a carrier virus containing the hepatitis C protein. The levels of HCV protein in immunized mice using this model were five orders of magnitude lower than the control.
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Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization (VIDO)
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