Scientists have revealed "the most detailed picture yet" of an important part of the Hepatitis C virus (HVC) that is responsible for infecting liver cells.
The researchers hope image will help them gain more insight into the virus, and could speed up the journey towards an effective vaccine, a Scripps research Institute news release reported. The findings focus on a protein called "E2 envelope glycoprotein."
"We're excited by this development," Ian A. Wilson, the Hansen Professor of Structural Biology at TSRI and a senior author of the new research, said. "It has been very hard to get a high resolution structure of E2 and it took years of painstaking work to finally accomplish that."
An HCV vaccine would most likely target E2, and researchers have already pinpointed "rare antibodies" that can bind to the protein and neutralize a number of strains.
Hepatitis C is responsible for more deaths every year than HIV. It is known as the "silent killer" because it slowly breaks down the liver without any symptoms, eventually resulting in cirrhosis or liver cancer. Liver transplantation has often been the only option for treatment.
An HCV vaccine could prevent the "silent killer" from being transmitted in the first place.
"It could be given to people when they're young and healthy, and they'd never have to worry about developing HCV-related liver diseases," Andrew B. Ward, another leader of the study, said.
Through their research, the team found HCV's E2 was not similar o West Nile and the dengue virus as was previously believed, but is structurally distinct and works differently from the way they would have assumed.
"It took our team six years to crack this very difficult scientific problem, but we didn't give up," Mansun Law, a leader of the study, said. "Now that we can visualize the structural details of these binding sites, we can design vaccine molecules that mimic them."
