Resolution of acute hepatitis B virus infections

Funding Activity

Website
http://purl.org/au-research/grants/nhmrc/453505

Funding Status
Closed

Does something not look right? The information on this page has been harvested from data sources that may not be up to date. We continue to work with information providers to improve coverage and quality. To report an issue, use the .

Funded Activity Summary

Though vaccination has had a major impact on the number of persons becoming infected, chronic infection with the hepatitis B virus (HBV) still remains a major worldwide problem, with 350 million people chronically infected. The existence of HBV vaccine escape mutants and the fact that 5% of vaccinees fail to respond implies that HBV will remain a significant public health problem for the foreseeable future. Current treatments for chronic HBV infection have a low success rate (~20%) and patients with chronic infection are expected to die prematurely due to chronic liver disease or primary liver cancer. Interestingly, exposure to HBV can lead to either acute resolving or chronic HBV infection. Like chronic infections, acute infections involve spread of virus to virtually every hepatocyte, followed by rapid clearance of the virus mediated by the host immune response. Our immediate aim is to study the resolution of acute HBV infections to determine how the stable intracellular viral genome, covalently closed circular DNA (cccDNA), is cleared from the nucleus of infected hepatocytes. Our broad long-term aim is to develop new and effective treatments for chronic HBV infection based on a better understanding of how acute HBV infections are resolved by the host. Based on our previous work we believe that clearance of cccDNA requires hepatocyte death, together with compensatory proliferation of other infected hepatocytes. We will perform detailed studies in duck hepatitis B virus (DHBV) infected ducks to determine if hepatocyte death and compensatory proliferation are essential to clear the infection, or if mechanisms exist for clearance that do not involve cell destruction.

Funded Activity Details

Start Date: 01-01-2007

End Date: 01-01-2009

Funding Scheme: NHMRC Project Grants

Funding Amount: $364,185.00

Funder: National Health and Medical Research Council

Research Topics

ANZSRC Field of Research (FoR)

Infectious Diseases

ANZSRC Socio-Economic Objective (SEO)

There are no SEO codes available for this funding activity

Other Keywords

Covalently closed circular DNA | Cytokine mediated effects | Hepatocellular carcinoma | Hepatocyte death and proliferation | Histological techniques | Inverse nested PCR | Liver disease | Resolution of hepatitis B virus infection | Therapy for chronic infection

Related Links