RT Journal Article SR Electronic(1) A1 Osawa, Mitsutaka A1 Uchida, Takuro A1 Imamura, Michio A1 Teraoka, Yuji A1 Fujino, Hatsue A1 Nakahara, Takashi A1 Ono, Atsushi A1 Murakami, Eisuke A1 Kawaoka, Tomokazu A1 Miki, Daiki A1 Tsuge, Masataka A1 Hiramatsu, Akira A1 Abe-Chayama, Hiromi A1 Hayes, C. Nelson A1 Makokha, Grace Naswa A1 Aikata, Hiroshi A1 Ishida, Yuji A1 Tateno, Chise A1 Miyayama, Yohei A1 Hijikata, Makoto A1 Chayama, KazuakiYR 2019 T1 Efficacy of glecaprevir and pibrentasvir treatment for genotype 1b hepatitis C virus drug resistance-associated variants in humanized mice JF Journal of General Virology, VO 100 IS 7 SP 1123 OP 1131 DO https://doi.org/10.1099/jgv.0.001268 PB Microbiology Society, SN 1465-2099, AB Combination therapy with glecaprevir (GLE) and pibrentasvir (PIB) has high efficacy for pan-genotypic hepatitis C virus (HCV)-infected patients. However, the efficacy for patients who acquired potent NS5A inhibitor resistance-associated variants (RAVs) as a result of failure to respond to previous direct-acting antiviral (DAA) therapies is unclear. We investigated the efficacy of GLE/PIB treatment for genotype 1b HCV strains containing RAVs using subgenomic replicon systems and human hepatocyte transplanted mice. Mice were injected with serum samples obtained from a DAA-naïve patient or daclatasvir plus asunaprevir (DCV/ASV) treatment failures including NS5A-L31M/Y93H, -P58S/A92K or -P32 deletion (P32del) RAVs, then treated with GLE/PIB. HCV was eliminated by GLE/PIB treatment in mice with wild-type and NS5A-L31M/Y93H but relapsed in mice with NS5A-P58S/A92K, followed by emergence of additional NS5A mutations after cessation of the treatment. In NS5A-P32del-infected mice, serum HCV RNA remained positive during the GLE/PIB treatment. NS5A-P58S/A92K showed 1.5-fold resistance to PIB relative to wild-type based on analysis using HCV subgenomic replicon systems. When mice were administered various proportions of HCV wild-type and P32del strains and treated with GLE/PIB, serum HCV RNA remained positive in mice with high frequencies of P32del. In these mice, the P32del was undetectable by deep sequencing before GLE/PIB treatment, but P32del strains relapsed after cessation of the GLE/PIB treatment. GLE/PIB is effective for wild-type and NS5A-L31M/Y93H HCV strains, but the effect seems to be low for P58S/A92K and NS5A-P32del RAVs. Although NS5A-P32del was not detected, the mutation may be present at low frequency in DCV/ASV treatment failures., UL https://www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/journal/jgv/10.1099/jgv.0.001268