Is vaccine against HCV possible?

Natural immunity against the hepatitis C virus (HCV) was discovered not long ago. Some infected individuals are able to clear the virus, while other patients need intensive antiviral drug treatment that is expensive and not always eff ective. For this reason, many eff orts are directed towards development of an eff ective vaccine in order to improve treatment outcome by stimulating humoral and cellular immune responses against HCV proteins or their immunodominant epitopes. Several HCV vaccine candidates have been tested in chimpanzees and promising results have allowed optimism about the development of at least partially eff ective vaccine against highly heterogeneous HCV pathogen. Hepatitis B virus core particles can be used successfully as a carrier of HCV epitopes. Chimeric HBc/HCV virus-like particles represent an interesting and valuable tool in the development of HCV vaccine.