T he movie Field of Dreams movingly resurrected some of baseball's greatest legends. This article, "Field of Themes," will resurrect some of the legendary hepatitis virus articles published in HEPATOLOGY over the past 4 years. Severe space constraints force this review to be restricted to hepatitis C virus (HCV), a virus that accounted for 71% of the 81 articles previously highlighted. I apologize to HBV aficionados that I cannot B all that I can B.
Virology/Technology
A major advance in the study of HCV has been the development of subgenomic replicons capable of transiently infecting hepatoma cell lines. Diverse applications of this replicon system have been reported in HEPATOL-OGY, and several are cited in the sections below. The replicon game has now moved to a bigger stage with the recent demonstration that a viral strain (JFH-1) from a patient with fulminant hepatitis could be grown in HuH7.5 cells and generate enveloped viral particles capable of passage in culture and transmission to the chimpanzee. 1 Is this the long sought Holy Grail of in vitro HCV propagation? Perhaps, but the application is currently limited because only this one "fulminant strain" is capable of growth and passage in culture. Efforts are now underway in many laboratories to improve the efficiency of this liver cell line and to adapt other strains of HCV to grow in this model system. I foresee technological unemployment for chimpanzees.
Another technological breakthrough is the development of HCV pseudotypes that represent the merging of genes coding for a retroviral core, HCV envelope, and green fluorescence protein. This pseudotype can readily infect HuH7 cells, and blockage of infection is a measure