The goal is a HBV cure. With current HBV therapeutics, reverse transcriptase inhibitors (RTIs), even > 5 years of treatment, do not lead to a cure rate above background. HBV is unlike HCV, where prolonged treatment with a high barrier to resistance combination therapy leads to a sustained virological response. Why is the bar to HBV cure so high? Possibly it is because HBV is a stealth virus that does not activate host defenses.1 A common thought is that to engineer a cure, either viral DNA must be turned off or infected cells must be turned over. A recent paper by Kum et al investigating the effect of prolonged treatment with a highly active Capsid Assembly Modulator (CAM) appears to have found a path to the turnover of infected cells.2
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