Hepatitis C vaccine breakthrough
Hepatitis C affects around 200 million people around the world and has a great ability to change its structure and evade the immune response, making it hard to create a vaccine against the disease. But the new vaccine only contains the most essential, conserved parts of the viral surface protein, so it works on a variety of strains. This is an illustration of a hepatitis B virus, which already has a preventative vaccine, as does hepatitis A. Image: somersault18:24/iStockphoto Researchers at the Burnet Institute have solved a hepatitis C vaccine mystery which, once developed could be the first ever preventative vaccine for the virus.Currently undergoing formal preclinical studies, the vaccine is the result of breakthrough work done by Associate Professor Heidi Drummer with her team from the Institute’s Centre for Virology.Hepatitis C affects around 200 million people around the world – a preventative vaccine has the potential to have a significant global...