Review
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Jan 14, 2016; 22(2): 862-873
Published online Jan 14, 2016. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v22.i2.862
Status of hepatitis C virus vaccination: Recent update
Kouka Saadeldin Abdelwahab, Zeinab Nabil Ahmed Said
Kouka Saadeldin Abdelwahab, Zeinab Nabil Ahmed Said, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Faculty of Medicine (for girls), Al-Azhar University, Cairo 11435, Egypt
Author contributions: Abdelwahab KS and Ahmed Said ZN contributed equally to this review.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Zeinab Nabil Ahmed Said, Professor, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Faculty of Medicine (for girls), Al-Azhar University, Nasr City, 8, Ossama Ibn Monkez Street, Heliopolis, Cairo 11435, Egypt. znabil58@yahoo.com
Telephone: +20-2-1006602418
Received: March 7, 2015
Peer-review started: March 11, 2015
First decision: April 13, 2015
Revised: May 16, 2015
Accepted: September 30, 2015
Article in press: September 30, 2015
Published online: January 14, 2016
Processing time: 305 Days and 13.1 Hours
Abstract

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is still a major public health problem worldwide since its first identification in 1989. At the start, HCV infection was post-transfusion viral infection, particularly in developing countries. Recently, due to iv drug abuse, HCV infection became number one health problem in well-developed countries as well. Following acute HCV infection, the innate immune response is triggered in the form of activated coordinated interaction of NK cells, dendritic cells and interferon α. The acquired immune response is then developed in the form of the antibody-mediated immune response (ABIR) and the cell-mediated immune response (CMIR). Both are responsible for clearance of HCV infection in about 15% of infected patients. However, HCV has several mechanisms to evade these antivirus immune reactions. The current review gives an overview of HCV structure, immune response and viral evasion mechanisms. It also evaluates the available preventive and therapeutic vaccines that induce innate, ABIR, CMIR. Moreover, this review highlights the progress in recent HCV vaccination studies either in preclinical or clinical phases. The unsatisfactory identification of HCV infection by the current screening system and the limitations of currently available treatments, including the ineligibility of some chronic HCV patients to such antiviral agents, mandate the development of an effective HCV vaccine.

Keywords: Hepatitis C; Viral envelope glycoproteins; Immune response; Hepatitis C virus vaccine; Clinical trials

Core tip: Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a major global public health problem. Chronic HCV infection affected around 130-150 million of the world’s population. The current treatment is expensive, showed some restrictions and is not efficient for all patients. No licensed vaccine is available for clinical use, however, researches on developing a preventive and therapeutic safe vaccine, are evolving. This review gives an overview of HCV structure, immune response and viral evasion mechanisms. It also evaluates the available preventive and therapeutic vaccines that induce innate, antibody-mediated immune response, cell-mediated immune response and interferon, and highlights the progress in recent HCV vaccination studies either in preclinical or clinical phases.