Hepatitis C neutralising antibodies can be generated by vaccination

Unlike  hepatitis A and B, there is still no vaccine that protects against hepatitis C (HCV) infection. Worldwide approx. 170 milion people are chronically infected and with 8000 new infections every day the pandemic is still not at its end, underlining the importance of a vaccine. HCV has only been discoverd in 1989 and HCV research is hampered by the lack of an in vitro system. Another problem is that the virus  can infect only humans and chimpanzees. In the past, several studies have been conducted at the BPRC in which potential HCV vaccine candidates have been evaluated in chimpanzees.

In one of these studies, 2 chimpanzees were immunised with a vaccine called E1 and 2 chimpanzees received vaccine E2. Upon infection with HCV all animals became infected but animals vaccinated with E1 rapidly cleared the virus. This in contrast to the animals that had received E2. Because the virus can not be cultured outside the body, a number of important parameters could not be measured. However, techniques that were not available at the time of the study have now revealed differences between the protected and non-protected animals. This research performed at the department of Virology of the BPRC has shown that only animals that had received E1 had made so called “neutralising antibodies”. In the article that was published in The Journal of Infectious Diseases it is shown that these antibodies can neutralise the virus, enabling the immune system to destroy the virus before it can spread throughout the body.

This for the first time demonstrates that an E1-vaccine can generate HCV specific neutralising antibodies. This is of great value in the further development of an effective vaccine against this dangerous virus.