REACTIVITY OF SYNTHETIC PEPTIDES REPRESENTING SELECTED SECTIONS OF HEPATITIS-C VIRUS CORE AND ENVELOPE PROTEINS WITH A PANEL OF HEPATITIS-CVIRUS-SEROPOSITIVE HUMAN PLASMA

A series of 54 synthetic peptides, 15-20 residues long, that represent ed selected parts of the structural proteins of hepatitis C virus (HCV ) were tested for immunoreactivity with a panel of 45 plasma samples f rom potential blood donors who were known to be seropositive for anti- HCV. Most of the ten peptides that represented the core protein showed reactivity with most of the panel samples. All except one of the 20 p eptides that represented non-hypervariable regions of envelope protein s El and E2 showed little or no reactivity. In contrast, 18 of the the 24 peptides that represented variants of the hypervariable region 1 o f the E2 protein reacted with at least one panel sample. Notably, 40% of the panel samples cross-reacted with two or more different peptides sequences some of which differed by more than 50%. Two panel samples each crossreacted with seven different peptide sequences. The results suggest a broad anti-hypervariable region antibody specificity in many anti-HCV-seropositive samples and possible limits on the mutability o f hypervariable region sequences. The work contributes to understandin g tt-ie immunogenicity and persistence of HCV. (C) 1997 Wiley-Liss, In c.