Yale Researchers Awarded $3.5 Million to Study Hepatitis C
Published: June 28, 2010
New Haven, Conn. Two Yale scientists have
received a $3.5 million grant from the National
Institutes of Health to study hepatitis C virus
(HCV), a deadly pathogen that attacks the liver
and afflicts about 170 million people worldwide.
Anna Marie Pyle, the William Edward Gilbert
Professor of Molecular Biophysics and
Biochemistry and an investigator for the Howard
Hughes Medical Institute, and Brett Lindenbach,
assistant professor of microbial pathogenesis,
will use the money to study the molecular underpinnings of HCV.
Current treatments for HCV are poorly tolerated
in patients and effective only in a minority. The
team hopes to dissect the critical features of
viral replication in hopes of laying the
groundwork for a new generation of therapies.
The team goal is to develop a functional
replication complex for HCV in the lab, which in
turn can be used to identify targets for new drugs.
“The success of the work will depend upon the
coordinated efforts of chemists, biochemists, and
viral geneticists,” Pyle said.
Nearly 2 percent of the U.S. population has been
infected by HCV, which can cause chronic liver
disease, cirrhosis, liver cancer and liver failure.
http://opa.yale.edu/news/article.aspx?id=7639