Generation of inducible hepatitis C virus transgenic mouse lines

Background and Aims: Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is the causative agent for most cases of chronic liver disease, cirrhosis, and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) affecting more than 170 million people world-wide. Progress in elucidating the nature of HCV and the development of new therapeutic strategies is fundamentally hampered by the absence of adequate small animal models simulating natural HCV infection. The creation of conditional mouse lines with the tetracycline-controlled gene expression system holds new perspectives for simulation of wild-type HCV infection in a small animal model. Methods: Transgenic mice wer…