What is Hepatitis B Gene Therapy

Gene therapy for hepatitis B mainly refers to anti-HBV gene therapy, which in turn includes antisense therapy, antigene therapy, clathrin-targeted inactivation, dominant-negative mutants, novel gene editing and other technologies, but gene therapy has not yet been applied to the clinic. 1. Antisense therapy is based on the principle of base pairing to artificially design antisense gene fragments complementary to DNA or RNA in some specific gene loci in the body, thus blocking the production of corresponding proteins. Antisense therapy for hepatitis B virus mainly includes antisense DNA, antisense RNA, nuclease technology and RNA interference. 2. Antigene therapy technology has been widely used in research on the treatment of tumors and viral diseases, but fewer studies have been reported on anti-HBV therapy. 3. Targeted inactivation of coat protein is achieved by targeting the fusion protein of viral coat protein and nuclease into the viral particles to degrade the viral nucleic acid and to inhibit viral replication. 4. Dominant-negative mutants, in which inactivation or mutation of one of the alleles causes the other normal allele to lose functional activity as well. This can lead to an inhibition rate of HBV virus replication as high as 90%~95%. 5. New gene editing technology, zinc finger nuclease, transcription activator-like effector nuclease and CRISPR/Cas9 three new gene editing technology. Among them, the efficiency of CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing is more than 1500 times higher than that of α-interferon. All of the above are gene therapies for hepatitis B. However, gene therapies have not yet been applied in clinic, so it is recommended that patients with hepatitis B seek the help of professional physicians and carry out the treatment in an orderly manner according to the doctor’s instructions, and do not blindly take the above medicines, so as not to cause serious adverse consequences.