Strategies for hepatitis C therapeutic intervention: now and next

Interferon-alpha-based therapies are the mainstay of hepatitis C treatment. However, these broad immunomodulatory agents, already limited by their side effects, expense and route of administration, are not efficacious in all cases. Therefore, research efforts have focused on identifying additional drugs and therapeutic modalities to benefit those individuals refractive to current therapy, and which might be more affordable, such as orally active small-molecule alternatives and preventive or therapeutic vaccines. It is likely that successful therapeutic intervention of hepatitis C will require a combination of approaches targeting different aspects of the viral life-cycle.