Hepatitis C virus peptides obtained from the NS4 coding region and their use in diagnostic assays

摘要

The etiological agent responsible for non-A, non-B hepatitis has been identified and termed hepatitis C virus (HCV). The HCV genome is a linear, positive-stranded RNA molecule with a length of approximately 9, 400 nucleotides. With the exception of rather short untranslated regions at the termini, the genome consists of one large, uninterrupted, open reading frame encoding a polyprotein of approximately 3,000 amino acids. This polyprotein has been shown to be cleaved co-translationally into individual viral structural and non-structural (NS) regions. The structural protein region is further divided into capsid (Core) and envelope (E1 and E2) regions. The NS regions are divided into NS-1 to NS- 5. The present invention is directed toward peptides derived from the HCV NS4 region that contain immunologically important epitopes. A series of biotinylated peptides were prepared by solid phase peptide synthesis and these peptides have proven useful for the detection of HCV-specific antisera.