Hepatitis C vaccine. Need of the hour.

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) was first identified in 1989. HCV is a small, enveloped RNA virus. Globally, 3-4 million persons are infected with HCV each year, and are at risk of developing liver cirrhosis and/or liver cancer. The common modalities of the spread of hepatitis C infection are blood transfusions, injection drug use, unsafe therapeutic injections, and healthcare-related procedures. The standard treatment for hepatitis C has been combination antiviral therapy with interferon (IFN) and ribavirin, which are effective against all the genotypes of hepatitis viruses (pan-genotypic). A 12-month course of Peg-IFN/ribavirin treatment costs > $20 000. New HCV-specific antiviral drugs, especially in combination, have shown very high cure rates; however, the annual cost for a single subject ($82 000) make these unaffordable in most of the world. There is no hepatitis C vaccine. However, several vaccines in development, and some have shown promising preclinical results. Over the last few years, numerous HCV vaccine approaches have been assessed in mice and primates, but only a few vaccines have progressed to human trials. The challenge to develop HCV vaccine is to move into larger at-risk or infected populations to test efficacy.