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Bengaluru: A group of Indian scientists has developed a vaccine meant to treat Hepatitis C, a virus or infection that causes liver disease and inflammation of the liver.
According to the report in Times of India, the team from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, has developed a vaccine for HCV genotype 3a.
The scientists said the vaccine has shown promising results in preclinical studies and is customised for the Indian population.
It is said that several preclinical trials of virus-like particle (VLP)-based vaccine strategies are in progress throughout the world.
But in the present study, Professor Saumitra Das and his team generated gt3a hepatitis C virus-like particles (HCV-LP). According to the scientists, the vaccine they have created is a “molecular cocktail of virus-like particles that mimics HCV along with a bio-engineered adenovirus vector (viral vectors are tools commonly used by molecular biologists to deliver genetic material into cells), encoding the core and envelope proteins of HCV”.
Journal Article: “Immune responses against hepatitis C virus genotype 3a virus-like particles in mice: A novel VLP prime-adenovirus boost strategy.” Vaccine Volume 34, Issue 8, 17 February 2016, Pages 1115–1125. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X15017272