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Courtesy of GEN News.

PODCAST: “First Tissue Culture System for Modeling HCV Infection”

—Martina Buck, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Medicine and Researcher at UC San Diego’s Department of Medicine and Moores UCSD Cancer Center, is interviewed by GEN’s Editor in Chief, John Sterling.

WHEN: August 21 — August 28, 2008

A University of California, San Diego School of Medicine researcher says she has developed the first tissue culture of normal, human liver cells that can model infection with the HCV and provide a realistic environment to evaluate possible treatments. The novel cell line, described in the July 16 issue of PLoS ONE, may allow pharmaceutical companies to effectively test new drug candidates or possible vaccines for the HCV infection, which afflicts about 170 million people worldwide. Currently, there is no animal model that is effective for testing such therapies, according to the PLoS ONE paper.

During this week’s GEN podcast, Dr. Buck discusses the key components of her HCV infection model and describes the unique aspects of her tissue culture system. She explains how it differs from other cell cultures used to study HCV and further explores the paths pharmaceutical companies can follow to take advantage of her new cell line.

Dr. Buck also talks about plans to take her research project to the next stage.

LISTEN NOW to this week’s GEN Podcast.