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Updated Sunday, December 7, 2008 10:24 am TWN, By Erika Wang, The China Post



	Chung-Chen Liu, vice president of the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) and general director of ITRI’s biomedical engineering research laboratory, gestures during an interview yesterday in Taipei City. (Akie Ang, The China Post) Enlarge Photo

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Practice to become personalized

One of ITRI’s unique solutions in this area is the screening of herbal compounds. “We were successful in screening these kinds of compounds against hepatitis B and hepatitis C,” says Liu. “One of the compounds we have is related to interferon, which boosts the body’s immune activity.”

Three technologies developed by ITRI related to herbal compound screening have already been licensed to local companies, which will move forward with clinical trials on humans. “Herbal products are more affordable and at the same time provide more unique opportunities and differentiation for us,” observes Liu.

In Taiwan there are unfortunately a lot of patients that suffer from these liver diseases and this has contributed for Taiwan to become well-known for its research in this area, says Liu. “Due to a very successful vaccine program (for hepatitis B) implemented over 20 years ago, for people younger than 20 years of age, hopefully hepatitis B will not be a major problem,” said Liu. However, for people over 20 years of age this disease is still a problem, he adds.

In the case of hepatitis B, before the vaccination program one in five people in Taiwan were considered carriers; of these, one percent to two percent developed cancer, Liu says.

While hepatitis B is caused by a DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) virus and preventable by vaccination, there is currently no cure for hepatitic C, which is caused by an RNA (ribonucleic acid) virus and spread by blood-to-blood contact. In the past, most of the treatments were targeted against the hepatitis C virus, but unfortunately this virus is an RNA virus, which means that it has a higher mutation rate than the DNA virus, and therefore also has a higher resistance, Liu explains. The virus eventually through genetic change becomes resistant to the drugs, he continues.

As there is no cure for hepatitis C, the government’s efforts focus on information dissemination to make people aware of the disease, he says.

A combination therapy that directly kills the virus and interferon inhibition (which does not kill the virus directly but boosts the body’s immune response so that the body’s immune mechanism inhibits virus replication) is essentially making some headway into managing the disease, notes Liu.

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