the Clinical Advisor take:

A newly-developed treatment for the hepatitis B virus (HBV) was 100% effective in curing the virus in preclinical trials, according to two papers published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The treatment is a combination of the antiviral drug entecavir and the anti-cancer drug birinapant.

Researchers at Melbourne’s Walter and Eliza Hall Institute developed the treatment based on their previous research on the behavior of HBV in infected cells. The treatment targets cell signaling pathways that HBV uses to keep host liver cells alive.

“Birinapant enabled the destruction of hepatitis B-infected liver cells while leaving normal cells unharmed. Excitingly, when birinapant was administered in combination with current antiviral drug entecavir, the infection was cleared twice as fast compared with birinapant alone,” said Marc Pellegrini, BSc, MBBS, PhD. “We are hopeful these promising results will be as successful in human clinical trials, which are currently underway in Melbourne, Perth and Adelaide.”

The treatment lets the host cells rid themselves of the virus as opposed to targeting the virus itself. The researchers hope that this will help prevent drug-resistant strains of HBV from emerging. Additionally, this type of treatment may represent new research avenues for other chronic infectious diseases.

If this treatment is successful in human trials, it will be the first cure for HBV. Worldwide, over two billion people are infected with HBV, with 400 million of those people having chronic HBV infections.

Phase 1/2a clinical trials of the drug have been underway since December 2014.