Hepatitis C virus: an overview of current approaches and progress.

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) was unambiguously identified in the year 1989 as the agent responsible for most cases of non-A, non-B hepatitis, a chronic disease that often leads to cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. Having developed the means to detect the virus in the general population, it is now apparent that HCV infection is widespread and is likely to remain a health threat unless effective treatments are developed. The inability to propagate the virus in tissue culture and the scarcity of convenient animal models have proved to be major obstacles in drug discovery. Despite these limitations, several opportunities exist for targeted drug development based on the viral enzymes that have been characterized so far. These targets and inhibitors reported to be active against them are discussed in the following review.