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A hepatitis C vaccine, a vaccine capable of protecting against the hepatitis C virus , is not yet available. Although vaccines exist for hepatitis A and hepatitis B, development of an HCV vaccine has presented challenges. No vaccine is currently available, but several vaccines are currently under development.
Most vaccines work through inducing an antibody response that targets the outer surfaces of viruses. However, the HCV virus is highly variable among strains and rapidly mutating, making an effective vaccine very difficult.
Another strategy which is different from a conventional vaccine is to induce the T cell arm of the immune response using viral vectors, adenoviral vectors that contain large parts of the HCV genome itself, to induce a T cell immune response against HCV. Most of the work to develop a T cell vaccine has been done against a particular genotype. There are six different genotypes which reflect differences in the structure of the virus. The first approved vaccine will likely only target genotypes 1a and 1b, which account for over 60% of chronic HCV infections worldwide. Likely, vaccines following the first approved vaccine will address other genotypes by prevalence.
VLP-based HCV vaccines are also subject of intensive research.