The Newsroom  •  Published Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2006, 2:29 PM
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Most common hepatitis C virus grown in lab

Galveston County Daily News (Internet / Print) 02/07/06 http://galvestondailynews.com/story.lasso?ewcd=da3f1fe24894982d Researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston have successfully grown the most common and damaging form of the hepatitis C virus in human liver cell cultures. Researchers believe the achievement — the first laboratory cultivation of a “genotype 1” hepatitis C virus — will significantly assist antiviral drug and vaccine discovery programs. “More than 50 percent of hepatitis C patients are infected with genotype 1 viruses, which are much less likely to respond to interferon,” said Stanley M. Lemon, director of UTMB’s Center for Hepatitis Research and senior author of a paper describing the work, which will be published online by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week. “A cell-culture infectious variant of genotype 1 virus has been urgently needed, and that’s what we’ve developed.”



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