No, I didn't just wildly hit a bunch of letters on my keyboard. SPC3649 is the research name of a promising hepatitis C treatment that's still in development.

What's all the fuss about?

SPC3649 has significantly reduced the hepatitis C virus in the blood of chronically infected chimpanzees. Of course, anytime a new drug shows promise for treating hepatitis C, it's a big deal. But the reason that new drugs are needed is because the current therapy doesn't work well for some chronic infections. It's well-known that some hepatitis C viral genotypes, such as Type I, are harder to successfully treat than others. Because of this, people with hard-to-treat forms of hepatitis C are half as likely to even start treatment (Journal article).

So when an experimental drug, such as SPC3649, produces a prolonged virological response, researchers start to think it may become a solution for these hard-to-treat forms and can be a hope to those who don't even start treatment. It's possible that this drug could be a treatment in itself; though, if successful, it could also be used in combination with peginterferon and ribavirin.

Ah, but there's more!

Another aspect of SPC3649 that's exciting for hepatitis C treatment is its high barrier to resistance. This means that the hepatitis C virus, which is notorious for its many mutations, isn't able to easily resist the treatment.

How's this drug different from the current therapy?

This drug is developed using a special kind of chemistry called "locked nucleic acid" or LNA. It's a DNA-based drug that targets specific liver molecules involved in replicating the hepatitis C virus. By this, I mean that instead of targeting the virus directly, it targets "helper" molecules in the liver. Without these "helper" molecules, the hepatitis C virus can't replicate. With no replication, the infection can't progress.

Should you get excited?

SPC3649 is getting some interesting press coverage, but it's still a long way from being prescribed by doctors. It's still in phase 1 clinical trials and won't begin its phase 2 trials until sometime next year. So stay interested, but remember, it takes awhile for new drugs to work their way through development. Here's a quick review of clinical trials.

If you're interested in learning more about this drug, here's an abstract in the journal Science. Here are two press releases, one from Santaris Pharma (the company that developed the drug) and one from SFBR, a collaborating research foundation.

We've come a long way. In the nearly three decades since HIV first became known, so many things have changed--especially with how people understand the virus and their reactions to the infection. It took five years between the first reported AIDS case and a sitting U.S. president publicly saying the word 'AIDS', but today there are success stories about delivering HIV treatments to some of the poorest nations of the world.

Even with all these successes, still there is a long way to go. World AIDS Day is held annually on December 1 to promote awareness of the realities of HIV. For example, there are more than 33 million people living with HIV worldwide. But perhaps we also need a World AIDS-Hepatitis Day. A proportion of these 33 million people are at increased risk for developing acute hepatitis, especially hepatitis B or hepatitis C. The CDC estimates that hepatitis C co-infection is common (50%-90%) among HIV-infected injection drug users. It's important for people to understand how co-infection with either hepatitis or HIV can affect the treatment and management of either disease.

For more information, check out the Word Aids Day website at www.worldaidsday.org.

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you enjoy all the trappings of the holiday: food, family and friends.

Testing for hepatitis B usually requires interpreting the hepatitis B serologic panel. Sounds easy enough, right? But here's the catch: this panel includes a number of markers and will have multiple interpretations of the various results. Here is a helpful table for interpreting the hepatitis B serologic panel.

While we're at it, perhaps brushing up on what all those letters mean for each hepatitis B test will help. Follow the links for information about HBsAg, anti-HBc (also called HBcAb), anti-HBs (also called HBsAb), and anti-HBc.