By David Secko
Culturing Hepatitis C
An unusual HCV strain opens the pathogen's entire life cycle to scrutiny.
Hepatitis C virus (HCV) has been difficult to study since its discovery in 1989; its unculturable status left researchers with a narrow view of the viral life cycle. But the discovery a few years ago of a highly infectious HCV strain (JFH-1) by Takaji Wakita's lab, then at Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Neuroscience, raised the possibility of developing a robust cell culture system. JFH-1 was a huge find, says Frank Chisari, from Scripps Research Institute, and Wakita gladly shared it.
