The Nobel Prize winner didn't make a hepatitis C vaccine.

2020 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to three scientists who "discovered the hepatitis C virus", giving the long-understated hepatitis C virus a bad brush on the screen.
people realized that hepatitis C, which has been detected for more than 30 years, has not yet been on the market.
, Michael Houghton, one of the three Nobel laureates, has been fighting for years to develop a hepatitis C vaccine, but the revolution has not been successful. Zhong , a researcher at the Pasteur Institute in Shanghai, said in an interview with China Science Daily that the four characteristics of the hepatitis C virus make it difficult to come up with vaccines.An important reason is the variability of the hepatitis C virus genome.
virus has 7 different genotypes and up to 67 subtypes, the nucleotide difference between genotypes is as high as 30% to 35%.
, the difference between different genotypes of HBV is only about 8%.
as an RNA virus, HCV-coded RNA polymerases lack corrective function and have a high mismatch rate.
same time, the virus has a high tolerance for mutations.
same degree of genetic variation may prevent other viruses from surviving and replicating, but has no effect on HCV, which is a "varied" virus.
currently available preventive vaccines for hepatitis A, B and E are unit-priced vaccines that can effectively prevent infection of all genotypes of the virus.
but the hepatitis C vaccine may not be so simple, a vaccine may be difficult to cover all genotypes of hepatitis C virus.
ideas that could be considered are either to find a conservative virus surface as a vaccine target or to develop a multi-priced vaccine, as is the case with cervical cancer (HPV) vaccines.This is to say that hepatitis C virus is a very mysterious and special feature.
culture of in-body cells with HCV is very difficult.
we look at the new coronavirus, isolated from the patient's body, can be cultured in a variety of in vitro cells, can also infect a variety of cells in vitro.
but hepatitis C virus can not, in-body infected cells can not do, amplification is even less.
because of this feature, the virus was not successfully isolated for more than a decade after Harvey James Alter discovered "non-A-non-hepatitis B" in the 1970s.
was Horton's pioneering use of molecular biology to clone the new virus.
is also because of this characteristic, it is difficult to rely on cell culture methods to obtain a large number of virus particles, it is difficult to produce inactivated or detoxifying vaccines that meet the needs, it is more difficult to expand to the scale of commercial production.We know that vaccines actually simulate the process of natural infection, activating the body's immune system.
of developing a vaccine against a virus is closely related to the natural clearance rate of the virus.
in hepatitis, neither hepatitis A nor E can cause chronic infections, and after an acute infection, the body can eliminate the virus itself.
5% to 10% of adult hepatitis B patients will be converted to chronic infection.
only 20% to 40% of those infected with HCV naturally remove the virus, while the rest suffer from chronic infections that last for life.
this determines that hepatitis C vaccine research and development is more difficult.
of course, HCV is far from the trickiest opponent.clearance rate of toxicity is 0.
without treatment intervention, patients are bound to be poisoned for life.
therefore, the development of hepatitis C vaccine, although more difficult than several other hepatitis, but far less than the AIDS vaccine as "hell-grade" difficulty.
that as long as some patients are able to remove the virus naturally, it means that we still have hope of activating the body's immune potential to fight the virus.There really is.
animal infection model is a very important tool for the development of hepatitis C vaccine.
but the natural host of HCV is so single that only humans and chimpanzees can be infected.
the U.S. National Institutes of Health announced in 2013 that it would stop using chimpanzees as experimental animals, making animal testing difficult.
people can only use gene-edited mouse models and other research work, but these animal models are generally not ideal.
, viruses such as hepatitis E are easier to build because they can infect many different animals.
although the hepatitis B virus can only infect humans and chimpanzees, but the hepatitis B vaccine was developed earlier, in chimpanzees have done some animal trials.
other animals, such as ducks, can also be infected with viruses similar to human hepatitis B virus, can also be used for animal testing. I believe it is necessary.
cost of drug treatment for hepatitis C is relatively high.
, a 12-week standard treatment costs $70,000 to $150,000, or tens of thousands of yuan even in China.
and the high incidence of hepatitis C is precisely in low-income countries and regions.
addition, although preventive measures to stop the spread of hepatitis C are gradually being improved, the rate of increase in new cases of hepatitis C in recent years has been rapid.
In China, 48% to 95% of injecting drug users have been found to be infected with HCV, and these populations have a very high risk of repeated infection, which may increase the probability of the virus developing drug-resistant mutations, and even contribute to the emergence of drug-resistant strains.
or that, to really eliminate an infectious disease, or rely on vaccines. In 2019, the world's first clinical trial of the protective and effective hepatitis C vaccine, a recombined chimpanzee adenovirus vector vaccine, was conducted.
results show that the vaccine does not protect the inoculator from infection, but reduces the peak level of HCV after infection, but also induces a certain immune response.
is a valuable step in the history of hepatitis C vaccine research and development.
, including Nobel Laureate Horton, many scientists around the world are continuing to look for ways to break the hepatitis C vaccine. Our lab is doing some work, too.
based on insect expression systems, we have obtained a trialic vaccine that covers nearly 70 percent of the world's major strains of the hepatitis C virus.
, the immunogenicity of our vaccine is better, and the production and cost problems have been solved.
we can't produce vaccines in the lab, and the main problem is how to work with companies to develop standardized production and clinical trials for vaccines.
in fact, hepatitis C vaccine research and development also face some practical problems.
because the current domestic rate of new hepatitis C infection is not very high, the drug is very successful, industrial enterprises on the hepatitis C vaccine interest is not very large.
my view is that the hepatitis C vaccine is still needed, unlike the new crown vaccine, which is needed by a large number of people around the world.
, but for those at high risk, a safe and effective hepatitis C vaccine remains a god of protection to look forward to.