By NL Biotechnologies…
Hepatitis C Vaccine Research and Development
NL Biotechnologies specialises in viral Hepatitis C vaccine research and development, we currently have 2 hepatitis C vaccine candidates completed at lab-scale and ready for trials.
Hepatitis C virus (HCV) belongs to the Flaviviridae family. HCV is currently the primary cause of liver disease and very often leads to cirrhosis, liver failure or liver cancer. It has been estimated that 170 million (3%) persons worldwide are chronically infected with HCV and that there are 3-4 million new cases each year. In 25% of cases, this chronic disease results in cirrhosis and/or hepatocellular carcinoma, which in turn lead to the death of more than 350,000 people each year.
NL Biotechnologies currently has two HCV vaccine projects. Project A is devoted to the development of a prophylactic vaccine to target the HCV E2 HVR1 epitopes and Project B involves the construction of nine HCV-like particles (HCV-VLP).
The products that were created in Project A from the integration of HCV HVR1 into recombinant HBs-Ag suggest that these products are suitable candidates for a bivalent vaccine against HCV and HBV infections.
Variants of HCV-LP products in Project B each having a distinguishing HVR1 sequence were found to be prospective prophylactic and therapeutic vaccine candidates because of their potential to induce virus-neutralizing humoral immunity (anti-core, anti-E1, anti-E2) and strong cellular immunity due to use of all structural virus-specific recombinant proteins.
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Hepatitis C Vaccine Research and Development