Latest News

Clues beginning to emerge on asymtomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection
Back in November of 2020, during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, I was teaching an in-person microbiology laboratory. One of my students had just been home to see his parents, and they all c…
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Could there maybe be better uses of genetics and probiotics?
Professor Meng Dong and his laboratory have created a probiotic that can metabolize alcohol quickly and maybe prevent some of the adverse effects of alcohol consumption. The scientists cloned a highl…
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ChatGPT is not the end of essays in education
The takeover of AI is upon us! AI can now take all our jobs, is the click-bait premise you hear from the news. While I cannot predict the future, I am dubious that AI will play such a dubious role in…
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Fighting infections with infections
Multi-drug-resistant bacterial infections are becoming more of an issue, with 1.2 million people dying of previously treatable bacterial infections. Scientists are frantically searching for new metho…
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A tale of two colleges
COVID-19 at the University of Wisconsin this fall has been pretty much a non-issue. While we are wearing masks, full in-person teaching is happening on campus. Bars, restaurants, and all other busine…
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News

Hepatitis C, what was once incurable, can now be cured


 

Hepatitis C (HPVC) is a virus that attacks the liver, and will take up residence for the long term. The body is unable to rid itself of the virus and it will continue to replicate in the liver, potentially leading to cirrhosis of the liver, liver cancer and potentially death. Recently some powerful new drugs have won approval that treat various parts of the HPVC replication cycle. Jon Cohen reports in Science Magazine of a new treatment combining the most promising of these drugs into a single therapy that in a small clinical trial cured patients of the virus in just 3 weeks. While the trial tested this idea out on the most treatable patients, it clearly demonstrated the power of the new drugs.

There is a downside to the story in that the drugs developed are prohibitively expensive with some of them selling for $1000 a pill. In addition the various drug companies have not tried these therapies sooner because they seem themselves as competitors, not collaborators. However, physicians are free to prescribe the drugs in combination. It’s a great day for science and drug development.