New therapies on the horizon for hepatitis C.

Therapy of chronic HCV infection has greatly improved in recent years with the addition of ribavirin to alpha interferon and has further improved more with the use of PEG-interferons. However, more than half of patients do not achieve lasting benefits from these therapies. The future therapeutic developments may include one or more of the following approaches: understanding the HCV genomic organization, elucidating the viral life cycle and HCV replication strategy and understanding the immune mechanisms required for viral propagation or infectivity. The development of novel antiviral strategies and a preventive vaccine against HCV infection remains a major challenge for the future, and will depend on progress on both molecular biology as well as clinical studies. Unfortunately, the low replication of the virus in culture, the lack of convenient animal models, and the high genome variability present mayor challenges for drug development.