Hepatitis C Virus and Its Inhibitors

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is believed to have infected approximately 175 million individuals worldwide, with an estimated two to four million new infections each year. The primary mode of transmission of HCV is via exposure to infected blood, including transfusions from infected donors, and through intravenous use of illicit drugs. Every single step of HCV replication has been targeted for therapeutic intervention with small molecules, three major proteins are emerging as the most attractive targets. The development of a broadly useful HCV subgenomic replicon system came as a major breakthrough after HCV research and drug discovery had been hampered for a long time by the inability to efficiently propagate the virus in tissue culture. In the case of HCV, chimpanzees are the only animal species that are known to be susceptible to virus replication. Nucleoside and nonnucleoside analogs have been used to treat HCV-infected chimpanzees.