| Hepatitis C, an infectious disease caused by hepatitis C virus, has become a major problem of health worldwidely. An estimated 170 million people worldwide are infected with HCV, and it is one of the principal cause of chronic hepatitis and cirrhosis. One of the main characteristics of HCV is its high propensity to establish chronic infectioa Clearance of the virus can occur spontaneously during acute HCV infection, and is associated with a vigorous, long-lasting cellular immune response against multiple HCV epitopes. However, the majority—up to 80%—of cases develop into chronic infection.Hepatitis C virus is a single-stranded positive RNA virus belonging to the Flavtviridae family. The HCV genome contains a 5' and a 3' untranslated regions (UTR) and a single open reading frame (ORF) encoding a polypeptide of about 3,000 amino acids. The polypeptide precursor is cotranslationally and posttranslationally processed by both cellular and viral proteases at the endoplasmic reticulum membrane to yield 10 mature proteins. From 5' to 3', they are C, E1, E2, p7, NS2, NS3, NS4A, NS4B, NS5A and NS5B proteins.Up to now, there are no effective prevention and therapy of HCV infection. The...
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