丙型肝炎预防性疫苗开发的需求、挑战和进展

Demands, Challenges and Progresses of Prophylactic Hepatitis C Virus Vaccine Development

丙型肝炎病毒感染全球约7 000万人,是危害公共健康的重要问题。近年来,上市的直接抗病毒药物弥补了传统丙肝干扰素疗法的不足,提高了病毒学应答水平,但存在着治疗费用高、病毒耐药突变等问题。丙肝病毒感染慢性化率高且隐匿性强,高危人群有着较高的新发和重复感染率,因此预防性疫苗的研发对于彻底控制丙肝传播非常重要。然而,由于病毒的高变异性等多种因素,目前仍缺乏有效的丙肝病毒疫苗。该文介绍了丙肝病毒疫苗开发的需求、难点、最新进展和未来方向。

Hepatitis C virus （HCV） infects about 70 million people in the world, imposing a major threat to public health. The recently developed direct antiviral drugs overcame the shortcomings of the traditional interferon-based hepatitis C therapy and improved the virological response. However, challenges remain including high therapeutic costs and drug-resistant viral mutations. HCV infections are often persistent and subclinical, and the frequencies of new and re-occurring infection are high in the high-risk groups. Therefore, development of a prophylactic vaccine is imperative to control of HCV transmission. However, no HCV vaccine is available at the present due to the high viral genome variability and other factors. This article summarizes the demand, challenges, recent progress and future direction in prophylactic HCV vaccine development.