Fig. 4

HBV gene silencing in transgenic mice. Eight HBV transgenic mice per group were injected intravenously with saline or 1 × 10¹¹ scAAV genome copies. a. Serum HBsAg and (b) HBV particles were measured over a 12-month period using ELISA or qPCR respectively. Immunohistochemical staining was performed on mouse liver sections at (c) 1 or (d) 12 months post scAAV infection. Liver sections from a representative of 3 mice per group taken at 20 × magnification are shown. Graphs on the right show quantification of HBcAg-positive cells (brown) from 10 randomly selected fields per group. All values were normalized and presented relative to anti-HCV vectors. e. HBV transcript levels relative to GAPDH transcripts determined using RT-qPCR. RNA was extracted from livers harvested from 4 mice per group at 1 and 12 month post AAV injection. The means (± SEM) were derived from groups comprising 4 to 6 mice. One-way ANOVA was used to ascertain statistically significant differences relative to anti-HCV vector controls. pvalues < 0.05 (*), < 0.001 (**), < 0.0001 (***) were regarded as statistically significant