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The ability of some individuals to spontaneously clear hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection suggests that immunity against the virus can exist and raises the possibility of an effective HCV vaccine. However, the genetic diversity of this virus vastly complicates the identification of target epitopes for a vaccine. To address this issue, a multinational team of investigators used a novel technique —“exhaustive panning of a phage-display antibody repertoire”— in which an antibody repertoire is successively interrogated using antigens masked with antibodies isolated during earlier selection rounds.
The researchers identified 73 monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) that targeted previously unrecognized antigenic regions on HCV envelope proteins E1 and E2. …