Possible role of apoptotic genes which could open the gate for Hepatitis C virus therapy

Abstract

HCV pathogenesis is multifactorial phenomena involving both viral and host factors. The mechanism of liver damage is still under investigation but apoptosis may play roles. It has been reported that the high viral envelope proteins mutation rate are involved in pathogenesis and chronicity of hepatitis C (Lee et al., 2005), and apoptosis results in the release of cytokines that induce inflammatory and fibrotic responses (Silbersteinet al., 2016).

HCV GT4which the cause of 20% of the chronic hepatitis C infection worldwide (Abd Elrazek et al., 2014) is recognized with low treatment response rates when compared to other genotypes (Riad et al., 2015).

Many studies are needed to understand the contributions of the different HCV genotype 4 proteins to the regulation of apoptosis in liver cells (Barathan et al., 2015). In this study a re-constructed three clones of E1/E2 polyprotein region of the HCV GT4 was transfected into Huh7cell line. On the other hand, high titre HCV GT4 positive serums were transfectd into Hep G2 cells. To investigate the possible implementation of E1/E2 and whole virus in apoptosis, Apoptosis rates were detected by flow cytometry.A human apoptotic array containing 84 genes was used to explain the apoptotic rates of E1/E2 transfected cells.