Department of Molecular Virology and Microbiology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030, United States.
Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Drexel University College of Medicine, Philadelphia, PA 19102, United States.
Curr Opin Virol. 2018 Jun;30:32-38. doi: 10.1016/j.coviro.2018.01.007. Epub 2018 Feb 20.
Chronic hepatitis B virus infection is a significant risk factor for cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. The HBx protein is required for virus replication, but the lack of robust infection models has hindered our understanding of HBx functions that could be targeted for antiviral purposes. We briefly review three properties of HBx: its binding to DDB1 and its regulation of cell survival and metabolism, to illustrate how a single viral protein can have multiple effects in a cell. We propose that different functions of HBx are needed, depending on the changing hepatocyte environment encountered during a chronic virus infection, and that these functions might serve as novel therapeutic targets for inhibiting hepatitis B virus replication and the development of associated diseases.
慢性乙型肝炎病毒感染是肝硬化和肝细胞癌的重要危险因素。HBx 蛋白是病毒复制所必需的，但缺乏强大的感染模型阻碍了我们对 HBx 功能的理解，这些功能可能成为抗病毒的靶点。我们简要回顾了 HBx 的三个特性：它与 DDB1 的结合及其对细胞存活和代谢的调节，以说明单个病毒蛋白如何在细胞中产生多种效应。我们提出，HBx 的不同功能取决于在慢性病毒感染过程中遇到的不断变化的肝细胞环境，并且这些功能可能成为抑制乙型肝炎病毒复制和相关疾病发展的新的治疗靶点。
