Anti-HCV Core Protein Monoclonal antibody, Clone C056M

Infection with hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a public health problem; it establishes a chronic course in most (up to 85%) infected patients and increases the risk for developing liver cirrhosis, hepatocellular carcinoma, and severe extrahepatic manifestations. The mechanisms of HCV persistence are largely related to the inefficient antiviral response of the host immune system. The effective clearance of the virus requires early activation of innate immune system together with the induction of a strong multiepitopic adoptive T cell response and long-term antiviral memory. Dendritic cells (DCs), which represent a heterogeneous population of antigen-presenting cells, contribute to the production of type I interferon, activate natural killer cells and induce adoptive immune response thus playing a major role in antiviral defense. In this case, DCs dysfunction in HCV-infection is considered to be the one of the mechanism that allows the virus to escape from the immune surveillance. The present review includes current data focusing on the role of DCs in the anti-HCV immune response and highlights a number of key issues related to the phenotypic and functional changes of various DC subpopulations in HCV-infection, the mechanisms of DC impairments and the prospects for treatment of chronic hepatitis C based on the use of ex vivo generated DCs.

Circulating immune complexes (CICs) are produced during the immune response. It is more clinically important to establish a general and efficient CICs dissociation technique for the detection of antigens for CICs other than the detection of free antigens in the serum. Polyethylene glycol (PEG) two-precipitation separation and glycine-HCl as a buffer system were employed to develop a general and efficient buffer dissociation technique to separate CICs from serum and dissociate antigens from CICs. The measurement value of new PEG two-precipitation separation technique was higher than traditional PEG precipitation separation technique. There were slight differences in the dissociation conditions of HCV Core-IC, HIV P24-IC, Ins-IC and TG-IC as compared to HBsAg-IC. The detection of antigens inHBsAg-IC, HCV Core-IC, HIV P24-IC, Ins-IC and TG-IC with this technique was superior to that with HCl Dissociation, Trypsin Digestion or Immune Complex Transfer technique. PEG two-precipitation dissociation technique may reduce macromolecular protein and the adhesion of free antigens during the co-precipitation, which increases the efficiency of separation and precipitation of CICs. This technique also avoids the damage of reagents to antigens, assuring the repeatability, reliability and validity. Thus, this technique is application in samples negative or positive for free antigens.