Hepatitis B virus (HBV) is a major cause of liver disease. HBV primarily infects hepatocytes by a still poorly understood mechanism. After an endocytotic process, the nucleocapsids are released into the cytoplasm and the relaxed circular rcDNA genome is transported towards the nucleus where it is converted into covalently closed circular cccDNA. Replication of the viral genome occurs via an RNA...

Interferon gamma (IFN-gamma), which has been cloned in several mammalian species and recently in birds, plays a critical role in modulating immune system function. IFN-gamma and tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-alpha) have been shown to be crucial in the pathogenesis of viral hepatitis and in the transient disappearance of hepatitis B virus (HBV) from the liver after adoptive transfer of HBV-sp...

Recently, a rat pancreatic cell line (AR42J-B13) was shown to transdifferentiate to hepatocyte-like cells upon induction with dexamethasone (Dex). The aim of this study is to determine whether transdifferentiated hepatocytes can indeed function like bona fide liver cells and support replication of hepatotropic hepatitis B virus (HBV). We stably transfected AR42J-B13 cells with HBV DNA and exami...