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HCV Case Study

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HCV infections are a major global health burden. HCV is a member of the Flaviviridae family where it forms the genus Hepacivirus. These viruses are enveloped and have a positive-sense single-stranded RNA genome. Initial attempts to infect cultured cell lines with HCV contained in serum of infected patients resulted in no virus replication or if any, very low and variable (4). In 2005, All 3 research teams, Charles Rice, Frank Chisari and Ralf Bartenschlager team, separately developed their cell culture systems for HCV based on 2 essential components: a virus genome that has robust and efficient replication in tissue culture, and cells that are permissive to infection and allow effective replication of the full virus life cycle.
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For viral genome, they used a genotype 2a subgenomic replicon SGR-JFH-1, and full-length chimeric genomes that were constructed with the use of the core-NS2 gene regions from the infectious J6 (genotype 2a) and H77 (genotype 1a) virus strains (3). As mentioned above, the advantage of using genotype 2a-derived replicons is that it efficiently replicates in Huh7.5 cell culture without adaptive mutations. This was an important prerequisite for establishment of a complete cell culture system because these mutations were found to interfere with virus full cycle production (1). However, although both subgenomic RNA and genotype 1a/2a chimera produced high titers of infectious HCV particles they were only able to replicate but not spread among naïve Huh-7.5 cells (3).
Frank Chisari team used Hud-7.5.1, another Huh-7-derived cell line to test the infectivity of HCV. Huh-7.5.1 cells were derived from the Huh-7.5 GFP-HCV replicon cell line I/5A-GFP-6. The I/5A-GFP-6 replicon cells were treated with human IFN-y to eradicate the I/5A-GFP-6 replicon. This resulted in an increased permissiveness in Huh-7.5.1 compared to Huh-7.5. Full-length genomic JFH-1 RNA generated from the genomic JFH-1viral clone can also productively replicate RNA, and furthermore, infectious virus particles, when transfected into Huh-7.5.1 cells (6). In

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