Drug combo cure for Hep B
WA patients are among the first in the world to get access to a potential cure for hepatitis B using a cocktail of antiviral and anti-cancer drugs.
The promising treatment is being used in patients in Perth, Melbourne and Adelaide after preclinical trials in hundreds of mice showed the drug combination was 100 per cent effective in curing the viral infection.
Hepatitis B is a serious liver infection that spreads mainly by sexual contact and while a vaccine can stop it, once contracted the infection is incurable and can last a lifetime.
About 225,000 Australians have a chronic form of hepatitis B.
Scientists from Melbourne's Walter and Eliza Hall Institute made the breakthrough with a combination treatment that uses birinapant, a drug developed by US biotech company TetraLogic Pharmaceuticals to treat cancer.
Researcher Marc Pellegrini said the treatment tricked infected cells into destroying themselves. "Birinapant enabled the destruction of hepatitis B-infected liver cells while leaving normal cells unharmed," he said.
"Excitingly, when birinapant was administered in combination with current antiviral drug entecavir, the infection was cleared twice as fast compared with birinapant alone."
The treatment targets the cell signalling the pathways that the virus uses to keep host liver cells alive, enabling it to "set up camp" in the body for months or years.
"Normally, liver cells would respond to infection by switching on a signal that tells the cell to destroy itself 'for the greater good' to prevent further infection," Dr Pellegrini said.
"But our research showed that the virus commandeers the liver cells' internal communications, telling them to ignore the infection and stay alive.
"Birinapant flips the cell survival 'switch' used by the virus, causing the infected cell to die."
More than two billion people worldwide are infected with hepatitis B. The virus infects liver cells and can lead to complications including cirrhosis and liver cancer. It causes more than 780,000 deaths a year.
Researchers said the same treatment approach could be used to for other chronic viral diseases such as HIV, herpes simplex and dengue fever.
WA patients are being recruited by Linear Clinical Research at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital.
