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So a virus is something that you can't see by normal light, microscopy, you need very
advanced techniques of electro-microscopy to see it, but that virus is not able to reproduce
itself without a host and us as human beings are made up of lots of different cell types
and we are interested in understanding at the molecular level how that virus infects
the liver and why does it infect the liver and it doesn't infect the heart or it doesn't
infect other tissues?
My own lab's research is a group of really talented basic scientists, both at the post-doctoral
and graduate level and one of the aspects of our work which I think exemplifies what
we're now able to do is that we've been working with a small company [0:00:56] in California,
who've developed a new compound that in the laboratory is very effective at preventing
Hepatitis C transmission and we are now, the paperwork is almost in place for a clinical
trial to start this October where we're going to be giving the drug prior to individuals
receiving a new liver transplantation, with the goal of preventing infection of that new
liver.
The long term big goal would be to contribute in some way to controlling Hepatitis C virus
replication in the liver. Most of the major pharmaceutical companies, this is one of their
top viruses at the moment they're working on so we may do this directly or indirectly
through our published work and we would hope we would have a significant impact on the
disease burden globally.