Abstract
Hepatitis E virus (HEV) is one of the main causes of acute hepatitis worldwide. Infections are particularly severe in pregnant women and chronic hepatitis E is known to occur in immunocompromised patients. Current therapy (ribavirin or pegylated alpha interferon) has severe side effects and cannot be employed in all patients. In order to evaluate potential new inhibitors of HEV replication, a luminescence-based replicon assay is particularly useful since it offers a rapid read-out and does not pose any biosafety risks (Debing et al., 2014).
Keywords: Hepatitis E virus, Antiviral assay, Subgenomic replicon, Inhibitor
Materials and Reagents
Equipment
Procedure
Representative data
Notes
Recipes
Acknowledgments
This protocol was adapted from Debing et al. (2014) and is partially based on earlier work by Shukla et al. (2012). Yannick Debing is a fellow of the Research Foundation-Flanders (FWO). This work was supported by KU Leuven Geconcerteerde Onderzoeksacties (GOA/10/014) and by EU FP7 project SILVER (260644).
References
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