Novel approaches to the pathogenesis of chronic hepatitis C virus associated liver disease

Funded Activity Summary

The incidence of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is rapidly increasing in our community. This infection cannot be prevented by vaccination and the current treatments often fail. We believe that the novel approaches we are taking towards gaining an improved understanding of this disease process have the potential to lead to better therapies. We propose to examine disease progression using the new technology of gene array which scans thousands of genes simultaneously to find those most activated. Our preliminary experiments indicated that one particular set of genes related to cell death is upregulated in HCV cirrhosis more than in other kinds of cirrhosis. We propose to pursue the diagnostic-prognostic potential of one of these molecules. Primarily this project will ask what kinds of genes are activated by HCV infection and at various stages of disease progression through to fibrosis and cirrhosis and following liver transplantation to better understand these processes. We believe that this research is likely to lead to a new understanding of hepatitis C associated liver disease that may lead to novel approaches to therapy.

Funded Activity Details

Start Date: 01-01-2001

End Date: 01-01-2003

Funding Scheme: NHMRC Project Grants

Funding Amount: $212,036.00

Funder: National Health and Medical Research Council

Research Topics

ANZSRC Field of Research (FoR)

ANZSRC Socio-Economic Objective (SEO)

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Other Keywords

Pathogenesis of chronic hepatitis, fibrosis, cirrhosis | autoimmune hepatitis | chronic hepatitis | gene expression profiling | hepatitis C virus infection | hepatocellular carcinoma | inflammation | liver cirrhosis

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