Large et al

Hepatitis B Virus (HBV) is currently a leading healthcare problem affecting more than 240 million people worldwide, despite the availability of a highly effective vaccine. Drug therapies are available on the market for the treatment of HBV, but these rarely provide a cure.

The development of novel compounds is hampered by the lack of easily accessible animal models and sophisticated in vitro tools that recapitulate the full viral life cycle. Patient isolates of HBV are infrequently used in in vitro HBV cultures but could prove useful for identifying novel therapies for a cure of HBV.

Here, we aimed to identify HBV-positive patient isolates capable of infecting primary human hepatocytes in a Liver MPS, and compared this with an infection launched from HepG2.2.15 derived virus.