SPECIAL SEMINAR - DR. HAREL DAHARI

Special Seminar

Date and Time:  Monday, Jun 13, 2011, at 14:00

Place: Nanotechnology Building (206), Seminar room, 9th floor

Speaker:  Dr. Harel Dahari

Department of Medicine, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA;

Theoretical Biology & Biophysics, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, USA.

Host: Dr. Doron Gerber, < biu.microfluidics@gmail.com>

Title: Modeling hepatitis C virus kinetics during treatment: in vitro and in vivo

Abstract: In the last decade serum hepatitis C virus (HCV) kinetics has become an important clinical tool for the optimization of therapy with interferon-alpha (IFN) and ribavirin. Standard mathematical models have generated important insights into HCV pathogenesis, viral-host dynamics and treatment optimization, and helped to elucidate the mode of actions (MOA) of IFN and ribavirin. However, until recently, these models were limited to viral kinetics measured in the serum of treated patients, and thus could not inform on intracellular viral dynamics within infected cells. Moreover, recent clinical trials with direct acting antivirals (DAAs) against HCV have revealed new viral kinetic patterns that have not been observed with IFN+ribavirin and pose a discrepancy with previous modeling results - which hints that the determinants of HCV decline under treatment may not be fully understood by the standard models. I will show how a new multi-scale model that includes intracellular HCV dynamics, reconciles the discrepancy and shed light on the MOA of IFN and DAAs. In addition, cell culture systems (in vitro) that allow the investigation and modeling of both intracellular and extracellular HCV kinetics during infection and treatment, and serve as complement approach for our in vivo modeling efforts, will be presented as well.