Hepatitis C now kills more people than HIV. While there’s increasing progress towards finding a reliable vaccine, results can’t come soon enough. Now, researchers have developed a nanoparticle that effectively eradicates hepatitis C 100 per cent of the time.
Researchers from the University of Florida have developed what they call a “nanozyme”. Based around gold nanoparticles, these things have their surface coated with two biological agents. One is an enzyme that attacks and kills the mRNA allowing hep C to replicate, while the other is a short string of DNA that identities the disease and sends the enzyme off to kill it.
While current hep C treatments attack the same replication process, they only work on about 50 per cent of patients treated. In lab-based tests, reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the Univeristy of Florida researchers showed that their approach was 100 per cent effective in both cell cultures and mice. They observed no side effects in the mouse models either.
While it’s great news, such a treatment is some way off from becoming available to patients. All targeted drugs have to be extremely carefully tested, as there’s always a risk that they could also end up targeting healthy parts of the body by accident. Given the current problems posed by hepatitis C though, that testing can’t happen soon enough. [PNAS via IEEE Spectrum]
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