Long-term hepatitis B virus infection of rhesus macaques requires suppression of host immunity

Sreya Biswas, Lauren N. Rust, Jochen M. Wettengel, Sofiya Yusova, Miranda Fischer, Julien N. Carson, Josie Johnson, Lei Wei, Trason Thode, Mohan R. Kaadige, Sunil Sharma, Majd Agbaria, Benjamin N. Bimber, Thomas Tu, Ulrike Protzer, Alexander Ploss, Jeremy V. Smedley, Gershon Golomb, Jonah B. Sacha and Benjamin J. Burwitz ()
Additional contact information
Sreya Biswas: Oregon Health & Science University
Lauren N. Rust: Oregon Health & Science University
Jochen M. Wettengel: Oregon Health & Science University
Sofiya Yusova: Oregon Health & Science University
Miranda Fischer: Oregon Health & Science University
Julien N. Carson: Oregon Health & Science University
Josie Johnson: Oregon Health & Science University
Lei Wei: Princeton University
Trason Thode: Translational Genomics Research Institute
Mohan R. Kaadige: Translational Genomics Research Institute
Sunil Sharma: Translational Genomics Research Institute
Majd Agbaria: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Benjamin N. Bimber: Oregon Health & Science University
Thomas Tu: The University of Sydney
Ulrike Protzer: Technical University of Munich / Helmholtz Zentrum München
Alexander Ploss: Princeton University
Jeremy V. Smedley: Oregon Health & Science University
Gershon Golomb: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Jonah B. Sacha: Oregon Health & Science University
Benjamin J. Burwitz: Oregon Health & Science University

Nature Communications, 2022, vol. 13, issue 1, 1-12

Abstract: Abstract Hepatitis B virus has infected a third of the world’s population, and 296 million people are living with chronic infection. Chronic infection leads to progressive liver disease, including hepatocellular carcinoma and liver failure, and there remains no reliable curative therapy. These gaps in our understanding are due, in large part, to a paucity of animal models of HBV infection. Here, we show that rhesus macaques regularly clear acute HBV infection, similar to adult humans, but can develop long-term infection if immunosuppressed. Similar to patients, we longitudinally detected HBV DNA, HBV surface antigen, and HBV e antigen in the serum of experimentally infected animals. In addition, we discovered hallmarks of HBV infection in the liver, including RNA transcription, HBV core and HBV surface antigen translation, and covalently closed circular DNA biogenesis. This pre-clinical animal model will serve to accelerate emerging HBV curative therapies into the clinic.

Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-30593-0 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:13:y:2022:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-022-30593-0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-30593-0

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().