ABSTRACT
Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is known to be a major cause of chronic hepatitis, liver cirrhosis and hepatocarcinoma. Therapeutic reagents are improving, but are still limited, and the protective vaccine against HCV is not available yet. However, the research of HCV life cycle and pathogenesis has been difficult due to obstacles, which are the lack of effective cell culture systems and small-animal models. Recently, breathtaking progress in terms of HCV replication system has been made using various forms of HCV clones and human hepatocarcinoma 7 cell lines (huh 7). The establishment of complete cell-culture system for HCV replication gave researchers opportunities to study the entire viral life cycle including entry, assembly, release of viral particles and the interaction with host cells. In fact, these efforts now appear to move into the identification and the development of innovative anti-HCV reagents. In this review, we go over the biological characters of HCV, a variety of in vitro cell culture, in vivo animal models of HCV infection, HCV immune-pathogenesis and the application of HCVcc system in terms of developing anti-HCV reagents.