We may never know why TT-034 was ineffective in lowering the HCV viral load but this team of Japanese researchers point to one possible reason. They show that the introduction of shrna expression cassettes in to human cells induces a type 1 interferon response. This response has now been show to inhibit the conversion of shrna into sirna.
The company has always maintained that TT-034 did trigger shrna production, however, if those shrna's were impeded from being converted to therapeutic levels of sirna, then that would explain why the drug lacked efficacy.
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