Duke NCRC researchers studying

Thursday, September 25, 2008 3:00 AM  |  Printer friendly version | E-mail to a friend | By Emily Ford

eford@salisburypost.com

KANNAPOLIS — Researchers for Duke University's MURDOCK Study want to understand why 50 percent of people treated for Hepatitis C never get better.

In the next six months, they could share some preliminary research results with the world.

MURDOCK Study investigators working on the Hepatitis C project are beginning to see genetic differences in the receptors, or entry points, for the virus, Dr. John McHutchison said Tuesday at N.C. Research Campus.

The groundbreaking study will focus on four diseases including Hepatitis C, a global killer that will become a growing problem in the United States as those infected in the 1960s, '70s and '80s begin to develop liver disease.

Injection drug use and contaminated blood transfusions before 1992 infected an estimated 4 million to 5 million Americans with the Hepatitis C virus. Many of them don't even know it yet.

"Liver disease will increase dramatically over the next two decades," McHutchison, a MURDOCK Study lead investigator, said at a seminar in the Core Laboratory Building.

There is no vaccine for Hepatitis C, and only a blood test can detect it. Treatment with drugs cures the disease for only half of those who undergo the grueling, yearlong therapy.

Having Hepatitis C is like "living with a time bomb," McHutchison said. "No one can predict what will happen."

Researchers at Duke's campus in Durham and the Core Lab in Kannapolis want to do just that — predict which people will develop the infection and learn why some patients respond to treatment, while others stay sick or die.

That will take years. But even before the Core Lab officially opens Oct. 20, MURDOCK Study scientists have made progress toward their first goal, discovering the profile of a patient who will or will not respond to therapy.

When Research Campus founder David Murdock gave Duke $35 million last year to launch the study, scientists used some of the money to begin running new tests on old biological samples stored at Duke from patients with liver disease.

Murdock's gift created a "good perfect storm," said Victoria Christian, chief operating officer for the MURDOCK Study.

It provided funding to begin measuring millions of proteins and genes with new technologies called proteomics andgenomics, which could be the key to determining the genetic cause of disease.

Soon, the bulk of Duke's MURDOCK Study research will move to the Core Lab and Duke's own building, which is still in the planning stages.

Researchers will continue using old samples during the first phase of the MURDOCK Study. Later, they will test their hypotheses using samples collected from 50,000 Kannapolis and Cabarrus County residents.

Several people who attended Tuesday's seminar spoke up and said they were either infected with Hepatitis C or they have a family member with the virus.

"It was quite a powerful interchange," Christian said.

If those people enroll in the study registry, which will begin this fall, they could participate in more specific research on Hepatitis C and play a valuable role in understanding the disease, Christian said.