Editorial
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Jun 21, 2015; 21(23): 7084-7088
Published online Jun 21, 2015. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v21.i23.7084
Novel therapeutic approaches for hepatitis B virus covalently closed circular DNA
Motoko Ohno, Motoyuki Otsuka, Takahiro Kishikawa, Takeshi Yoshikawa, Akemi Takata, Kazuhiko Koike
Motoko Ohno, Motoyuki Otsuka, Takahiro Kishikawa, Takeshi Yoshikawa, Akemi Takata, Kazuhiko Koike, Department of Gastroenterology, Graduate School of Medicine, the University of Tokyo, Tokyo 113-8655, Japan
Author contributions: Ohno M, Otsuka M, Kishikawa T and Koike K wrote the manuscript; Yoshikawa T and Takata A prepared the figures.
Conflict-of-interest: No potential conflicts of interest relevant to this article were reported.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Motoyuki Otsuka, MD, Department of Gastroenterology, Graduate School of Medicine, the University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8655, Japan. otsukamo-tky@umin.ac.jp
Telephone: +81-3-58008812 Fax: +81-3-38140021
Received: January 28, 2015
Peer-review started: January 29, 2015
First decision: March 26, 2015
Revised: April 9, 2015
Accepted: May 4, 2015
Article in press: May 4, 2015
Published online: June 21, 2015
Core Tip

Core tip: Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is a global health problem. Because current therapeutic approaches do not eliminate HBV nuclear covalently closed circular DNA (cccDNA), novel therapeutics to target cccDNA are needed to eradicate HBV infection. Genome editing technologies are expected to be promising therapeutic options against HBV cccDNA. In particular, the clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats/Cas9 system is an easily customizable sequence-specific nuclease with great flexibility and may be the most feasible approach to target HBV cccDNA, as further research studies develop more effective protocols.