Department of International Health, Immunology, and Microbiology, University of Copenhagen, The Panum Institute, Building 24.2, Blegdamsvej 3c, DK-2200 Copenhagen N, Denmark.
Curr Infect Dis Rep. 2007 Mar;9(2):94-101. doi: 10.1007/s11908-007-0003-6.
Persistent hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection affects 170 million people worldwide. Acute HCV infection is often asymptomatic, but many infected individuals develop persistent infections that may lead to development of end-stage liver diseases, including liver cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. Thus, an HCV vaccine that could significantly lower the chronicity rate would have a major impact on the disease burden. Unfortunately, HCV is a highly mutable virus, and escape mutations can undermine vaccine-induced virus-specific immunity. Also, HCV exists as multiple genotypes, and so genotype-specific vaccines might be required to achieve broad protection. Finally, vaccine development has been hampered by the lack of a small animal model and cell culture systems, but these are currently being established. Despite these obstacles, several vaccine candidates tested in the chimpanzee HCV model have shown some encouraging results.
全球有 1.7 亿人患有持续性丙型肝炎病毒 (HCV) 感染。急性 HCV 感染通常无症状，但许多受感染的个体发展为持续性感染，可能导致终末期肝病，包括肝硬化和肝细胞癌。因此，一种能够显著降低慢性率的 HCV 疫苗将对疾病负担产生重大影响。不幸的是，HCV 是一种高度易变的病毒，逃逸突变可能破坏疫苗诱导的病毒特异性免疫。此外，HCV 存在多种基因型，因此可能需要基因型特异性疫苗来实现广泛保护。最后，疫苗的开发受到缺乏小动物模型和细胞培养系统的阻碍，但这些系统目前正在建立中。尽管存在这些障碍，但在 chimpanzee HCV 模型中测试的几种疫苗候选物已经显示出一些令人鼓舞的结果。
