Patent Evaluation: An Antibody Detection System for HCV

Summary

Novelty: An oligopeptide epitope from a sample of non-A, non-B hepatitis (NANB) virus is described. This enables both polyclonal and monoclonal antibody based detection to be used.

Biology: NANB hepatitis affects humans with such diseases as acute hepatitis, liver cirrosis and hepatocarcinoma and occurs in 10% of post operative blood recipients in Japan. The antibodies to the protein epitope described here detect patients not detected by the Chiron antigen kit.

Chemistry: The peptide used is from a protein taken from chimpanzees infectd with serum from a human patient. Nucleic acids from the plasma of one of the chimps was cloned in a cDNA library and screened with antibodies from a chronically infected human. A clone was sequenced and eventually a peptide sequence VAKQHVRDGRKDSLDGFV(Y) was isolated. This was used to raise antibodies which can be used in conventional kits.