Towards a solution for hepatitis C virus hypervariability: mimotopes of the hypervariable region 1 can induce antibodies cross-reacting with a large number of viral variants.

This consensus mimotope is derived from 234 variants of HCV E2 glycoprotein at N-terminal hypervariable region 1 (27 aa) by 2-cycle selection from constructed phage library with 20 HCV infected sera covering various geno-/sero-type. Average binding values from two independent experiments greater than 3 folds of wild type phages are considered as positive. From 20 HCV patients' sera used for screening, 70% of them are reactive. Among another 18 HCV infected viremic patients, 61% sera are positive, and 37% sera from 41 HCV antibody-positive and non-viremic (HCV RNA-negative) patients are positive.