HCV-Core over-expressed specifically in liver cells

Abstract

Hepatitis C viruses (HCV) affect 170 million patients, but only a minority of patients develop symptoms and manage to clear the virus, and the pathogenesis remains unknown. Previous studies discovered that some viral proteins may suppress HCV specific T lymphocytes, leading to lower immune responses. Although many mouse models have been tried in laboratories worldwide, none of them mimicked natural Human HCV infection with individual HCV genes in vivo. To study the immunopathogenesis of HCV infections, we constructed some chimeric liver-specific vectors and one was selected to establish promoted mouse models, which express individual HCV genes specifically in the liver. In this research, the over-expression of HCV-Core and the cellular immune responses in mice driven by global and liver-specific promoters were also detected. Although the DNA injection needs to be optimized, our results indicate that liver-specific expression may provide a new way to elucidate the pathogenesis of HCV infections.