"Hepatitis C Virus-Specific Hammerhead Ribozymes Cleave Target RNA Efficiently and Inhibit Viral Gene Expression."

According to an abstract submitted by the authors to the 31st Annual Meeting of the European Association for the Study of the Liver, held August 25-29, 1996, in Geneva, Switzerland, "The 5'non coding region (5'NCR) of HCV has been shown to be essential for viral translation. In the present study we analyzed whether catalytically active antisense RNA's (hammerhead ribozymes; RZ) directed against targets in the 5'NCR efficiently cleave viral RNA and inhibit viral gene expression. Chemically synthesized RZ were constructed to cleave the HCV RNA in the 5'NCR between nt positions 165 and 166 (RZ-A), 270 and 271 (RZ-B) or 330 and 331 (RZ-C). When 5 nM RZ-A/B/C were added to 50 nM of specific...

Want to see the full article?

• Purchase this article for only $3.00