Ezetimibe as a Safe and Efficacious Treatment for Chronic Hepatitis C
Status:
Active, not recruiting
Trial end date:
2021-12-31
Target enrollment:
Participant gender:
Summary
To address the need for more affordable hepatitis C virus (HCV) antivirals with high barriers
to viral resistance and strategies to shorten the current treatment duration, the goal is to
develop affordable therapeutic regimens to prevent HCV entry/spread and test the efficacy of
those inhibitors for treating HCV infection. The investigators recently discovered that a
major cholesterol uptake receptor is required for HCV entry into hepatocytes and that there
is already an FDA-approved drug that inhibits cholesterol uptake by this receptor.
Importantly the same drug also potently blocks HCV entry in human liver cells both in cell
culture and in a small animal model. Further, looking back at people who were previously
treated for HCV infection, the investigators found treatment response to be better (i.e.
larger viral log reduction) in patients who happened to be taking ezetimibe (EZE). Hence, the
objective of this study is to assess whether the FDA-approved drug (ezetimibe) is useful for
the treatment of chronic HCV. The investigators predict that when administered as monotherapy
ezetimibe will reduce HCV viremia perhaps allowing for viral clearance and that when included
in combination treatment regimens that EZE will increase HCV decline resulting in faster
viral clearance (i.e. shorter/cheaper direct-acting antiviral [DAA] therapy). To test these
hypotheses, the investigators will execute the following aims: (1) Assess the efficacy of EZE
monotherapy in chronically HCV infected and predict time to cure; (2) Assess the efficacy of
EZE as an adjunct therapy in chronically HCV infected patients undergoing currently approved
HCV DAA treatment.