Immunogenicity of highly conserved fragments of hepatitis C virus envelop proteins E1 and E2

摘要

Though there are 300000 patients infected with hepatitis C virus(HCV)revealed worldwide at present,effective methods of HCV diagnostics and treatment have not been developed yet.It is explained by extremely high polymorphism of HCV genome.Even in a single infected organism virus population is presented by a variety of structurally and antigenically different quasispecies.Besides the information about functionally important sites of HCV envelope proteins is poor and the mechanism of HCV entry into cells almost is unknown.We have supposed that continuous highly conserved regions(CR)in HCV envelope proteins may have an important role in the HCV life cycle.They can participate in the mechanism of HCV attachment to a host cell and can be responsible for the formation and support the viable E1E2 heterodimer.Antibodies produced against these sites should have wide specificity and,hence,these sites can be used for anti-HCV vaccine design.Moreover,the corresponding antibodies targeted these sites can be useful for the study of HCV biology.However,no monoclonal antibody preparation is reported with a specificity to any CR and there is poor data on the presence of antibodies of such specificity in hepatitis C patients' sera.For this reason the aim of the present study is estimation of the immunogenicity of the highly conserved sites of the HCV envelope proteins E1 and E2.