News & Events
News & Events
[2016 Event] Dr. Marc P. Windisch’s participation in ‘23rd International Symposium on Hepatitis C Virus and Related Viruses’ in Kyoto, Japan in October 2016
2016-12-15
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Dr. Marc P. Windisch, Head of Hepatitis Research Laboratory, gave a talk at the 23rd International Symposium on Hepatitis C Virus and Related Viruses in Kyoto, Japan in October 2016 with the title ”Development of a small molecule drug interfering with hepatitis C virus entry by targeting viral glycoprotein E1”. About 300 participants from all over the world attended the meeting to discuss and the latest scientific data and unmet medical needs for chronic hepatitis C.
Since recently, hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is curable. However, viral drug resistance, difficult to treat HCV genotypes and the high economic burden to therapy are of concern. Furthermore, all marketed direct acting antivirals interfere with HCV RNA replication and are not ideal to treat liver transplantation patients or to prevent vertical virus transmission.
To address these unmet medical needs Institut Pasteur Korea (IPK) devised strategies using the infectious HCV to carry out a phenotypic, cell-based target-free screening campaign. By excluding HCV RNA replication inhibitors IPK focused on compounds interfering with viral entry. Thereby, a potent thiophene urea (TU) scaffold was identified and characterized. TU’s putative molecular target is the viral glycoprotein E1. TU inhibits HCV entry, cell-to-cell transmission which is the major route of HCV transmission in the liver. Additionally, TU’s antiviral activity mediates synergistic effects when combined with FDA-approved HCV drugs, and TU inhibits pre-existing resistant strains induced by today’s therapies. Accordingly, IPK came up with a first-in-class drug candidate for HCV therapy.
About HCV 2016 (23rd International Symposium on Hepatitis C Virus and Related Virus)