Gene silencing approaches for the treatment of hepatitis C virus infection | ||
| Journal of Advanced Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Sciences | ||
| Article 7, Volume 4, Issue 1, January 2021, Pages 42-44 PDF (284.62 K) | ||
| Document Type: Original Article | ||
| DOI: 10.21608/jabps.2020.49330.1108 | ||
| Authors | ||
| hossein elbadawy* ; Naif Aljuhani | ||
| College of Pharmacy, Taibah University Universities road, Madinah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia | ||
| Abstract | ||
| Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is a worldwide concern. Only minor portion of the infected patients can clear the virus whereas the majority (more than 70%) progress to advanced stages of liver deterioration which in most cases lead to liver cirrhosis and cancers if remained untreated. Current standard treatment for hepatitis C is the combination treatment with polyethylene glycol pegylated interferon-α and ribavirin (PEG-IFN-α/RBV). Conventional treatment for hepatitis is reported to show variable degree of success and, most recently, the combination of two or more agents has shown great promise. Conventional therapy for HCV, however, is time consuming and expensive and could considerably reduce the quality of life for most of the patients. Gene therapy is an emerging branch of science aimed at the manipulation of genetic sequences. Gene therapy has been recently introduced to virology as a novel anti-viral class of medicines. The innovative idea is to target the HCV viral genome by clipping or blocking to arrest the viral replication. This can be achieved by gene silencing techniques such as siRNA. This will cause viral degradation by hindering the viral genome functionality pre- or post-translational to offer a specific and promising tool which has not been investigated thoroughly. Results from using siRNA in vitro are promising, however, this area of research is still evolving. | ||
| Keywords | ||
| siRNA; RNAi; HCV; gene silencing | ||
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