Differential inhibition of lamivudine-resistant hepatitis B virus by allele-specific RNAi.

Drug-resistant hepatitis B virus (HBV) is a serious problem affecting antiviral therapy. In this study, two long-term eukaryotic cell lines with full-length HBV were constructed and contained either lamivudine-resistant mutants (HBV-YIDD) or wild-type virus (HBV-wt). High levels of intracellular viral DNA replication were observed continuously after transfecting the plasmids into HepG2 cells, and HBV surface antigen (HBsAg) and HBV e antigen (HBeAg) were secreted into the cell culture supernatant. A series of experiments showed differential inhibition of HBV gene expression and replication by four specific siRNAs, according to the principles of allele-specific RNAi technology. The results showed that the designed siRNAs with a mismatch in the sixteenth nucleotide of the guide strands could effectively discriminate the HBV-YIDD mutants from the wild-type alleles, thus providing a new insight into the development of antiviral therapy with differing or complementary patterns characteristic of lamivudine-resistant HBV.