Boettler Tobias, Gill Upkar S, Allweiss Lena, Pollicino Teresa, Tavis John E, Zoulim Fabien
Department of Medicine II (Gastroenterology, Hepatology, Endocrinology and Infectious Diseases), Freiburg University Medical Center, Faculty of Medicine, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany.
Blizard Institute, Centre for Immunobiology, Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK.
JHEP Rep. 2022 Apr 2;4(6):100480. doi: 10.1016/j.jhepr.2022.100480. eCollection 2022 Jun.
Cure from chronic HBV infection is rare with current therapies. Basic research has helped to fundamentally improve our knowledge of the viral life cycle and virus-host interactions, and provided the basis for several novel drug classes that are currently being developed or are being tested in clinical trials. While these novel compounds targeting the viral life cycle or antiviral immune responses hold great promise, we are still lacking a comprehensive understanding of the immunological and virological processes that occur at the site of infection, the liver. At the International Liver Congress 2021 (ILC 2021), a research think tank on chronic HBV infection focused on mechanisms within the liver that facilitate persistent infection and looked at the research questions that need to be addressed to fill knowledge gaps and identify novel therapeutic strategies. Herein, we summarise the discussion by the think tank and identify the key basic research questions that must be addressed in order to develop more effective strategies for the functional cure of HBV infection.
目前的治疗方法很少能治愈慢性乙型肝炎病毒（HBV）感染。基础研究从根本上帮助我们增进了对病毒生命周期以及病毒与宿主相互作用的了解，并为目前正在研发或正在临床试验中测试的几种新型药物类别提供了基础。虽然这些针对病毒生命周期或抗病毒免疫反应的新型化合物前景广阔，但我们仍缺乏对感染部位肝脏中发生的免疫和病毒学过程的全面了解。在2021年国际肝脏大会（ILC 2021）上，一个关于慢性HBV感染的研究智囊团聚焦于肝脏内促进持续感染的机制，并探讨了为填补知识空白和确定新的治疗策略而需要解决的研究问题。在此，我们总结了智囊团的讨论内容，并确定了为制定更有效的功能性治愈HBV感染策略而必须解决的关键基础研究问题。
