Hepatitis C affects between 130 and 170 million people worldwide and is the cause of an epidemic of liver. Because current treatments for HCV are only partially effective, a number of other molecular mechanisms that are being actively pursued as a possible target of the drug.Scientists at the Florida campus of the Scripps Research Institute have identified a molecular interaction between a structural protein C virus (HCV) and a protein essential for viral replication. This new finding suggests a new method of inhibition of virus production and a potential new therapeutic target for developing drugs against hepatitis C.
The study was published in the January 2010 issue (Volume 92, Part 1) Journal of General Virology.
Although our conclusion that the HCV core protein interacts with the non-structural helicase was not entirely unexpected, something that was not really confirmed until this study, said Donny Strosberg Scripps Florida, who led the study. But the most interesting part is that small molecule inhibitors of dimerization [the union of two identical subunits] kernel inhibits the interaction between the core and helicase, and possibly prevent production of infectious viral particle.
In this spirit, Strosberg was to examine the protein capsid, the protein the most conserved among all HCV genotypes. Basic plays several key roles in the viral life cycle in the host cell. And ‘particularly important in the assembly of the nucleocapsid of hepatitis C or capsid, a crucial step in the formation of infectious viral particles, the nucleocapsid of the viral genome is protected by a layer of proteins. Interacting with the various structural proteins and nonstructural viral, plays an essential role in the cycle of HCV assembly and release of infectious virus and the removal of viral particles outside the host cells
These new data underscore the essential role of the viral protein known as fundamental as the main organizer of the meeting and infectious HCV particles support a new molecular understanding of the formation of the viral particle itself.
Last year, Strosberg has developed a new test for the quantitative monitoring of protein-protein interactions with the specific purpose of identifying inhibitors of the dimerization of the base, which could block the production of virus. Strosberg and his colleagues have discovered peptides derived from the capsid protein of hepatitis C virus that inhibit not only the dimerization of the core proteins, but also the production of the workforce of the virus.
In the new study, Strosberg and his colleagues have focused on non-structural proteins that provide functions for the production of HCV NS3 helicase in particular. The scientists’ findings support a growing body of evidence that this protein is involved in the assembly and production of infectious viral particles. The interaction of basic protein with the non-structural protein also confirmed as the basis of the main organizers of the assembly of the virus and suggests that it acts to facilitate packaging and integration of newly synthesized viral RNA.