Antiviral potency analysis and functional comparison of consensus interferon interferon-alpha2a and pegylated interferon-alpha2b against hepatitis C virus infection

摘要

BackgroundCurrent treatments for chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection employing pegylated interferon plus ribavirin are successful in approximately 50% of patients, demonstrating a need for more effective therapy. Consensus interferon (CIFN) is a recombinant type I interferon (IFN) that has demonstrated efficacy in patients who fail to respond to conventional IFN based therapy, suggesting it has distinct biological properties from native IFN species. Here we evaluated the host cell antiviral response and anti-HCV actions induced by IFN-alpha2a (IFN-α2a), pegylated-IFN-alpha2b (PEG-IFN) or CIFN treatment of cultured immortalized human hepatocytes, Huh7 human hepatoma cells, and Huh7 cells harboring genetically distinct HCV RNA replicons or infected with HCV 2A.