Boston-based research center wins $15m to fight hepatitis C

A research collaboration based in Boston has won a five-year, $15 million grant to study how the hepatitis C virus defies immune system efforts to defeat it.

The Cooperative Center for Translational Research in Human Immunology, which will be based at Massachusetts General Hospital, won the grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the hospital said. Dr. Raymond Chung, director of hepatology in the MGH Gastrointestinal Unit, will co-direct the new center with Dr. Paul Klenerman of Oxford University.

The center also includes researchers from MIT, Harvard, the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and the Wistar Institute, in Philadelphia.

Hepatitis C is a viral, blood-borne disease that can cause a life-threatening liver infection. Some people recover from the infection, but for most people the illness is chronic. The center will explore how the immune system fails to suppress and remove the virus.