Viral hepatitis

• Statement from American Liver Foundation June 30, 2023
  FAIRFIELD, N.J., June 29, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- "A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Hepatitis C in America demonstrates an alarming concern that despite available treatment options for the disease, only 1 in 3 American adults have been cured," said Emmanuel Thomas , MD, PhD, Board Chair of American Liver Foundation and an expert in viral hepatitis.
• "Hepatitis C, left untreated, can lead to liver cancer and liver failure for the 2 million Americans affected by the disease.
• "It is imperative that we educate Americans about the dangers of untreated Hepatitis C, who is at risk, and that a cure is available.
• We must also reduce barriers to treatment and ensure we are reaching the most neglected patient populations," added Dr. Thomas.

• “We are excited to share the latest data on our promising HDV/HBV entry inhibitor program and next-generation HBV core inhibitors with the scientific community,” said William Delaney, PhD, chief scientific officer of Assembly Bio.
• “Data presented from our entry inhibitor program, from which we expect to nominate a development candidate this year, highlight our rapid progress in developing a small molecule inhibitor of this validated mechanism.
• ABI-H3733 (3733) and ABI-4334 (4334) are novel, structurally distinct, orally bioavailable investigational core inhibitors that exhibit nM potency against pgRNA encapsidation and covalently closed circular (ccc)DNA formation.
• Subsequent to presentation at EASL’s International Liver Congress™ 2023, Assembly Bio intends to make the posters available on the “Events & Presentations” page in the “Investors” section of its website at www.assemblybio.com .

• More than 296 million people worldwide live with hepatitis B, a potentially life-threatening liver infection caused by the hepatitis B virus (HBV).
• Early detection of HBV-infected patients could therefore improve patient prognosis and stop transmission within populations.
• We are among a group of researchers at the Australian National University who study machine learning and infectious disease.
• Enabling earlier care should give millions of people a better quality of life and help reduce HBV prevalence.

How did we do the work?

• The institute is Nigeria’s foremost medical research institute and it hosts a dedicated hepatitis B clinic.
• Routine blood tests can be very useful in facilitating early diagnosis if the subtle interactions between measurements can be spotted.
• One reason machine learning is so powerful is that it does not require humans to tell the computer which features to identify.

What did we find?

• We then translated this into a user-friendly, web-accessible app to use in further studies.
• The tool found that a combination of two enzymes, patient age and white blood cell count was the strongest predictor of HBV infection.
• Serum albumin, a liver function marker, was also identified as an important predictive marker of infection.

What’s next?

• Before a tool like this is put to work in routine clinical practice, it needs to be validated using diverse data.
• Our machine learning tool was trained with data from Nigeria, so its performance may be limited to that setting.
• We are in the process of training our algorithm with more data from other sources and validating its robustness in other settings.

• Globally, more than 350 million people are living with viral hepatitis, and 9 in ten people living with hepatitis are unaware of their diagnosis.
• Tianlong's HCV&HBV detection solution can help reduce the transmission of the disease by enabling early diagnosis and proper treatment.
• Since October 2022, Tianlong's HCV&HBV detection solution has been successfully installed in public hospitals in Thailand.
• The company has reached a 7-year agreement with local hospitals, and its solution will be seen in more local hospitals in the future.