Gene disruption for cure hbv?

General Discussion
1

Hi,
Seems like there are researches being done to come up with new/better drugs to combat hbv disease.
Is there any promising development using gene?
hbv does not get as much attention as hiv. And the below link shows possibility for using gene disruption for hiv cure.

would this fall under gene therapy or gene engineering?

2

Hi Catcher.007,

In this example, targeting the disruption of the CCR5 protein appears to have not had any short term side effects on immune function (we still will hope to hear how this patient does over the next few years). This also worked because we had a good understanding of the important role CCR5 plays in HIV attachment and entry for many years.

In the case of HBV, the host proteins which have been identified to date are involved in housekeeping functions critical for maintaining human chromosomal organization and stability or are involved in regulating protein formation. It is uncertain how disruption of one or more of these proteins would affect normal human physiology. Also, replacement of the tissue reservoir for HIV (bone marrow) is much easier than for thie tissue reservoir for HBV (the liver).

Best regards,

3

I agree with @availlant here, it’s quite difficult to target something that Hep B uses that our bodies also don’t need. I’m not sure we are at a point yet where we can show that particular genes can control if Hep B persists in the liver.

Thomas

4

Thank you for your comments.

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