HCV vaccines—back to the future?

HCV is a huge global problem. Major advances have been made in recent years in the drug therapy for chronic HCV infection (1). If patients have access to such directly acting antiviral agents, there is a very high chance of cure in most settings, even in patients with advanced disease or with previous treatment failures. However, in order to effectively get on top of the epidemic, such therapy is likely only one weapon, as there is still a substantial amount of ongoing transmission and undiagnosed disease, often in populations that are hard to reach. Virologic cure through the new agents does not lead to host immunity, so approaches to prevention of new or repeat infections are still needed. For this reason, a vaccine for HCV still has an important place at the table (2,3).