Persistent infection with hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a major cause of chronic hepatitis, liver
cirrhosis, and hepatocellular carcinoma. All treatments known so far rely on the antiviral
activity of interferon alfa (IFN-α) that is given alone or in combination with ribavirin.
Unfortunately, only a fraction of the patients clear the virus during therapy and for those who
do not respond there is currently no alternative treatment. Selectable subgenomic HCV
RNAs (replicons) have been recently used to investigate the effect of IFN-α on HCV …