ABSTRACT
Recently, the therapy of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection, especially with the direct-acting antiviral agents (DAAs), has achieved many progresses. Although it is expected to cure HCV infection completely in the coming future, long-term application of DAAs will inevitably induce virus resistance, resulting in treatment failure. To solve this key problem, development of host-targeting agents (HTAs) emerges as one of effective strategies. HTAs targets the essential host factors for various stages of HCV life cycle, and thus has several advantages against HCV with reducing viral resistance, pan-genotypic antivirus, synergistic antiviral effects combined with known DAAs and decreasing side effects of drugs. This review summarized the recent progress of investigating HTAs in the preclinical and clinical study, to provide clues for the development of new anti-HCV drugs.