Fig 1.

Characterization of the anti-HCV activity of GBVA10-9. (A) The helical wheel analysis demonstrates that GBVA10 is amphipathic. (B) Serially diluted GBVA10-9 or C5A was mixed with HCVcc (multiplicity of infection = 0.1) and then immediately added to Huh7.5.1 cells and incubated for 12 h before the medium was changed. The HCV RNA was quantified at 48 h after infection. A scrambled peptide (TCFWLVTRKLLGRRRYLL) was included as a negative control. (C) VSV-Gpp and HCVpp packaged with envelope proteins from major genotypes were used to infect Huh7.5.1 cells in the presence of serially diluted GBVA10-9 for entry assay. A C5A-treated genotype 1a HCVpp was included as a control. GBVA10-9 inhibits multiple genotypes of HCVpp, with IC₅₀ ranging from 0.02 to 0.15 μM. The IC₅₀ of C5A is about 0.76 μM. The results are calculated relative to those for DMSO-treated cells. (D) Cytotoxicity of GBVA10-9 measured by MTT assay. The peptide was incubated either with HeLa, HepG2, or Huh7.5.1 cells for 4 h or with Huh7.5.1 cells for 24 h before measurements.