The Nobel Prize winner who discovered the hepatitis C virus said: Hepatitis C vaccine may be launched within five years

Professor Michael Houghton said that a vaccine to prevent hepatitis C infection may be put into use within 5 years

Up to 2 million new HCV infections occur worldwide each year, and it is estimated that there are 70 million virus carriers worldwide, most of which are undiagnosed

"Although the advent of direct-acting antiviral drugs (DAAs) has given us a huge weapon to treat hepatitis C, there is no doubt that this vaccine needs to help the world achieve its ambitious goal of reducing new hepatitis C by 2030.

He will discuss that although countries like Egypt have successfully developed large-scale control plans for hepatitis C (since 2014, 50 million hepatitis C patients have been screened for DAAs and 4 million hepatitis C patients They were treated and cured), but they were able to do so thanks to the mass production of generic drugs ($84 per patient)

He will explain how the scientific community understands what immune response can protect HCV infection, as well as many technologies, including new RNA technology (for Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccine) and adenovirus-based technology (by Oxford University and Aspen Likang Development, and Johnson & Johnson (Johnson & Johnson) are able to replicate these protective immune responses through vaccination

Sir Michael of the Li Ka Shing Applied Virology Institute and his colleagues are currently developing an adjuvanted recombinant vaccine that is expected to induce the production of antibodies against multiple cross-neutralizing epitopes, making it more difficult for the virus to escape the humoral immune response

Sir Michael will discuss how the COVID-19 pandemic has delayed many areas of medical research, including work on the hepatitis C vaccine

He said: "If safety and effectiveness are proven, the

Sir Michael used Canada as an example to point out that a successful vaccine can save huge costs-it is estimated that the use of DAAs to treat injectable drugs in ten years will incur about 1 billion Canadian dollars (800 million US dollars) in drug costs, by comparison The cost of vaccines used to protect the same population is estimated at 20 million U.

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