Hepatitis C virus ( HCV) is a leading cause of chronic hepatitis, cirrhosis, and hepatocellular carcino-ma in humans.Due to the lack of suitable experimental animal models for HCV infection, the development of more effective treatment of HCV infection and vaccines has been delayed.Chimpanzee is the best experimental animal model for the re-search of hepatitis C virus ( HCV) infection.However, because of its limited in resource, expensive in breeding, and difference in clinical symptoms, thus developing new experimental animal models for HCV-related basic and applied re-search is imminent.In recent years, as a surrogate animal model, the development of rodent model and other models has been achieved a lot of progress.Using such as genetically modified experimental techniques, those surrogate animals were infected with HCV in vivo and were successfully applied to research in several areas.In this review, we will focus on the a-chieved progress in naturally infected animal model and transgenic surrogate experimental models, and their advantage and limitation in usage in study on the pathogenetic mechanism of infection, drug evaluation and development of vaccines, and will also discuss the future direction of development of experimental animal models for research of infection with HCV.

APOBEC3 is a class of cytidine deaminase, which is considered as a new member of the innate immune system, and APOBEC3G belongs to this family. The research about APOBEC3G is a new direction of innate immune defense mechanism against virus. APOBEC3G has the restrictive activity on many viral replications, which deaminates dC to dU in the viral genome and then induces extensive hypermutation. APOBEC3G can also interrupt viral replication at several phases such as reverse transcription, replication, nucleocapsid and so on by non-deamination mechanisms. However, virus can encode viral proteins to counteract the restriction activity of APOBEC3G. Elucidation of the antagonistic interaction between APOBEC3G and the virus will be contributed to development of new antiviral drugs in the future.

For obtaining new structural compounds with unique resistance profiles or novel mechanisms of action on HIV-1 from natural products, anti-HIV-1 drug screening models were used in vitro. Norcantharidin (NCTD), a derivative from cantharidin, was found to have inhibitory activities on HIV-1(IIIB) p24 antigen in lymphocyte lines MT-4, CEM and H9. It inhibited HIV-1 strain 018a (sensitive to zidovudine) from replicating with EC50 (50% effective concentration) of 14.9 micromol L(-1) and also inhibited HIV-1 strain 018c (resistant to zidovudine) from replicating with EC50 of 20.2 micromol L(-1) in primary lymphocytes peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC). Norcantharidin showed synergistic activity with zidovudine on HIV-1(IIIB) in MT-4 cells, the combination index was less than 0.3. But, it was not active on HIV-1 integrase, reverse transcriptase or protease in vitro. As the structure of norcantharidin is unique and different from that of all clinic drugs approved, it would be possible to obtain new and effective compounds against HIV-1 with low toxicities after modification of norcantharidin.

Plant active components characterized of many different structures and activities on multiple targets, have made them to be the important sources of inhibitors on HIV-1. For finding leading compounds with new structure against HIV-1, three key HIV-1 replicative enzymes (reverse transcriptase, protease and integrase) were used as screening models. The in vitro activities of 45 plant derived components isolated from Schisandraceae, Rutaceae and Ranunculaceae were reported. Within twelve triterpene components isolated, eight compounds were found to inhibit HIV-1 protease, in these eight active compounds, kadsuranic acid A (7) and nigranoic acid (8), inhibited both HIV-1 protease and integrase; Among fifteen lignans, meso-dihydroguaiaretic acid (15) and kadsurarin (16) were active on HIV-1 reverse transcriptase, and 4, 4-di(4-hydroxy-3-methoxyphenly)-2, 3-dimethylbutanol (13) active on HIV-1 integrase. All of the six alkaloids, seven flavones, and five others compounds were not active or only with low activities against HIV-1 replicative enzymes. Further studies of the triterpene components showing strong inhibitory activities on HIV-1 were warranted.

An improved and practical synthesis of racemic 11-demethylcalanolide A [(±)-1] was developed. This improved process involved Pechmann reaction on phloroglucinol with ethyl butyrylacetate to give 5, 7,-dihydroxy-4-n-propylcoumarin(3). Poly phosphoric acid (PPA) catalyzed acylation of compound(3) with crotonic acid, then intramolecular cyclization was achieved simultaneously in one step to afford the key intermediate chromanone(4). A microwave assisted synthetic method preparing chromene(6) using chromenynation of chromanone(4) with 1, 1-diethoxy-methyl-2-butene was conducted. Luche reduction of chromene(6) using NaBH<,4> with CeCl3·7H2O preferably gave (±)-1. The overall yield of this four step synthesis of (±)-1 was around 32% increasing one fold more than that of the previous method. An in vitro investigation showed that (±)-1 exhibited inhibitory activities against both wild-type and drug-resistant HIV-1 in HIV-1 RT and cell culture assay, and significant synergistic effects in combination with AZT, T-20, and indinavir. Its LD50 of acute toxicity in mice by intragastric administration and by intraperitoneal injection were 735.65mg·kg-1 and 525.10mg·kg-1, respectively. The C<,max> and AUC<,0-∞> were 0.54μg·mL-1 and 1.08(μg·mL-1)·h, respectively. The dynamics study of the inhibition of mice sera on HIV-1 RT showed that mice treated with 100mg·kg-1 (±)-1 once intraperitoneally were similar to that of 5mg·kg-1 of known clinical effective anti-HIV-1 drug neverapine. The results suggested that further investigation of the anti-HIV candidate (±)-1 was warranted.

Chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection has become a major public health burden worldwide. Twenty-two sophocarpinic acid or matrine derivatives were synthesized and their anti-HCV activities were evaluated in vitro. The structure-activity analysis revealed that (i) sophocarpinic acids with a D-seco 3-ring structure scaffold were more favorable than matrines with a 4-ring scaffold; (ii) the introduction of an electron-withdrawing group on the phenyl ring in 12-N-benzenesulfonyl Δ (βγ) sophocarpinic acids was beneficial for the antiviral activity against HCV. Among them, compounds 9h and 9j exhibited the most potent inhibitory activities on HCV replication with selectivity indies of 70.3 and 30.9, respectively. Therefore, both were selected as antiviral candidates for further investigation.

Interferon (IFN) in combination with ribavirin has been the standard of care (SOC) for chronic hepatitis C for the past few decades. Although the current SOC lacks the desired efficacy, and 4 new direct-acting antiviral agents have been recently approved, interferons are still likely to remain the cornerstone of therapy for some time. Moreover, as an important cytokine system of innate immunity, host interferon signaling provides a powerful antiviral response. Nevertheless, the mechanisms by which HCV infection controls interferon production, and how interferons, in turn, trigger anti-HCV activities as well as control the outcome of HCV infection remain to be clarified. In this report, we review current progress in understanding the mechanisms of IFN against HCV, and also summarize the knowledge of induction of interferon signaling by HCV infection.

HCV genotypes have been documented in clinical practice. The aim of this study was to determine the replication priority of different HCV genotypes in a Chinese HCV positive cohort. Serum samples from 491 apparently healthy Chinese blood donors testing positive for HCV antibodies and naive to antiviral drug therapy were tested. Genotyping analysis showed that genotypes 1b and 2a were predominant and accounted for 77.6% of the HCV infections. Among the genotype groups, individuals infected with genotype 2a had an HCV RNA viral load (10(8) copies/mL) about 200-fold (lg, 2.3) greater than those infected with other genotypes (10(4)-10(5) copies/mL) indicating a replication priority of genotype 2a. However, there was no correlation between HCV genotype and antibody response suggesting that the amplification advantage of genotype 2a results from a favorable interaction with the host cellular environment. In conclusion, HCV genotypes 1b and 2a are the predominant genotypes in China and genotype 2a possesses a significant replication priority compared with the other genotypes. This suggests the existence of host cellular factors that may act as drug-targets for entirely clearing HCV infection in the future.

A series of novel N-phenylbenzamide and N-phenylacetophenone compounds were synthesized and evaluated for their antiviral activity against HCV and EV71 (strain SZ-98). The biological results showed that three compounds (23, 25 and 41) exhibited considerable anti-HCV activity (IC50=0.57-7.12 μmol/L) and several compounds (23, 28, 29, 30, 31 and 42) displayed potent activity against EV71 with the IC50 values lower than 5.00 μmol/L. The potency of compound 23 (IC50=0.57 μmol/L) was superior to that of reported compounds IMB-1f (IC50=1.90 μmol/L) and IMB-1g (IC50=1.00 μmol/L) as anti-HCV agents, and compound 29 possessed the highest anti-EV71 activity, comparable to the comparator drug pirodavir. The efficacy in vivo and antiviral mechanism of these compounds warrant further investigations.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1016/j.apsb.2019.01.013.].