Screening of New Therapeutic Agent for Hepatitis B Virus

This is a four years project. The object of this project is to use cultured human hepatoma cell line and HBV transgenic mice as two screening models to screen anti-HBV activity in different synthetic compounds and nature product preparations. Results generated from this study will identify novel drug leads for developing anti-HBV drug in the future. Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the leading cause of cancer death among male Chinese. The mortality of HCC patients is nearly 100%. Infection of HBV frequently results in acute and chronic hepatitis and is associated with a high risk of developing liver cancer in human. New infection with HBV can be prevented by vaccination. However, there are still four millions HBV chronic carriers in Taiwan waiting for drug to stop disease progression and to develop new anti-HBV therapeutics is still urgently needed. We have studied anti-HBV activity from natural products in human hepatoma cells for years. One of the pure compounds isolated from Taiwania cryptomerioides Hayata , HE145, has shown to have potent anti-HBV activity. HE145 suppresses endogenous HBsAg production in Hep3B cells, inhibits the replication of HBV in cultured human hepatoma HepG2 cells. The antiviral application of HE145 has granted patent from both US and European Union. In this project, we will employ cultured human hepatoma cells and HBV transgenic mice as models to screen the bioactive natural products supplied from other chemistry laboratories in this national program project. This study will not only get bioactive compounds through bioacssay- leaded screeninng but also validate its potential as anti-HBV drug in our HBV transgenic mice model. The novel bioactive compounds with diverse biological activities from natural products give us a unique opportunity to develop research area of chemical biology in Taiwan. Fully integration of chemistry, biology will strengthen each PI’s specialty and synergistically enhance our scientific competitiveness. This project will set an example of teamwork effort to attack the major health threaten in Taiwan.

Project ID:PD9408-0205
External Project ID:NSC94-2323-B182-001