UC Merced Office of Research

Background

For producing RNA viruses, applications such as drug screening or basic research require immortalized tissue cultures that enable efficient production of fully infectious viruses of a genotype of clinical interest and are easy to use. In the case of hepatitis C virus (HCV), however, existing tissue culture systems yield incompletely replicated viruses (which do not infect cells in vitro), work only transiently, or are not robust enough and otherwise yield viruses with less prevalent HCV genotypes such as genotype 2. Thus, there is a need for a continuous or semi-continuous HCV production system that overcomes these limitations with the generation of a fully infectious HCV of genotype 1.

Description

Researchers at the University of California, Merced (UCM) have stably transfected immortalized human cells with a CG1b construct that can release infectious HCV of genotype 1b into the cell culture media. The UCM researchers demonstrated the infectivity of this media using Huh7 and Huh7.5 cells (figure 1).

FIGURE 1—Infectivity of the CG1b media of this invention containing HCV genotype 1b and of a JFH1 media containing HCV genotype 2a.

Applications

The UCM tissue culture system may find widespread use in numerous research and drug discovery applications where efficient and continuous production of completely replicated, fully infectious HCV is required.

Advantages

The UCM tissue culture system, along with the JFH1 system, are the only continuous tissue culture systems that can efficiently generate HCV that can infect Huh and other cells in vitro. Unlike JFH1, this invention can replicate HCV genotype 1b, which is more prevalent and of greater clinical interest than the HCV genotype 2 produced by JFH1.

Patent Status

Additional Patent Pending

Inventors

• Choi, Jinah
• Liang, T. Jake

Other Information

Contact

David Cepoi / dcepoi@ucmerced.edu / tel: View Phone Number. Please reference Tech ID #21002.

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ADDITIONAL TECHNOLOGIES BY THESE INVENTORS

• Chemical Modulation of Hepatitis C Virus Mutation Rates

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