How is it different from peg interferon alfa?
Yes, we have described it here: Ausperbio announces AHB-137 Monotherapy achieves 30% functional cure in HBe-negative CHB patients on stable NA therapy - #5 by Nawab
Indeed, very interested in seeing progress in this area.
My understanding is that there are a few modifications that make it a little more stable, but it is the same active molecule
TT
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Precision Biosciences presented the liver biopsy results today which showed clearance of CCC DNA. Can this be a hope for cure? Thanks in advance for your expert opinion.
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Dear @SR123 ,
Unfortunately, the scientists at Precision Biosciences have not been forthcoming with the fact that PBGENE-HBV gene is essentially a mRNA vaccine. All mRNA vaccines strongly stimulate innate immunity in the liver which likely accounts for most, if not all, of the antiviral effects they have observed. Liver biopsies are useful for examining liver disease (which is uniform in the liver) but have little to no value for examining HBV infection because it is only found in about 30% of the liver and is quite heterogenous. It is not possible for a liver biopsy to demonstrate cccDNA clearance from the liver - this is quite an irresponsible statement on the part of Precision Biosciences.
Also disappointing is their failure to highlight the fact that these patients have very low baseline HBsAg and so will respond to the immunostimulatory properties of this mRNA vaccines much more strongly that the typical patient with HBV infection.
Ultimately, the only data that will provide any measure of how PBGENE-HBV can acheive curatuive results will be to remove NUC therapy and wait for ~1 year to see if infection rebounds.
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there is some update for that trial https://investor.precisionbiosciences.com/news-releases/news-release-details/precision-biosciences-announces-new-and-late-breaking-pbgene-hbv/ is that pgRNA marker valuable in context of that trial so as they claim: “Published literature has demonstrated that loss of pgRNA supports an approximately 10-fold increased probability of cure after discontinuation of nucleoside analog therapy” ?
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Hi @sorte,
Thanks for this update and great question. Just to provide a little context: it is hard to understand what is happening in the liver because it’s so hard to access. As an alternative, there have been several attempts to understand exactly what is happening in the liver through different molecules in the blood (including pgRNA, HBcrAg, HBV RNA…). As far as I know, most of these are not fully validated and can’t exactly reflect what is in the liver, but they’re likely to be at least roughly correlated to the amount of cccDNA in the liver.
Hope this helps,
TT
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