On the occasion of World Hepatitis Day, Dr. Josep Quer, responsible for basic research in hepatitis C at the Liver Disease group at Vall d'Hebron Research Institute (VHIR) explains the status of research into this disease to Vall d'Hebron Barcelona Hospital Campus. "On July 28 we celebrate World Hepatitis Day in honour of the birthday of the Nobel Prize Baruch Samuel Blumberg, who discovered the hepatitis B virus and developed the first vaccine against this virus.The factors that can cause inflammation of the liver (hepatitis) is multiple (more than 30 described) and range from alcohol, genetic diseases, toxins, drugs, to the viruses. There are many viruses that infect the liver, but those that selectively infect are the so called hepatitis viruses, and they are 5: A, B, C, D and E. Regarding the prevalence is estimated that over 400 million people worldwide are chronically infected by one of these viruses. Among these, B and C are those that have a greater impact on public health, because they are the leading cause of cirrhosis and liver cancer, which in turn is the main indication for liver transplantation.In recent years and especially since the beginning of 2015, the clinical use of new combinations of direct antiviral action for the treatment of chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) has allowed us to achieve very high rates of viral cure (definitive elimination of the virus), above 90%. In the coming months, new combinations of anti-HCV drugs will be approved, increasing the chances of choosing the most appropriate treatment for each patient. The challenge is to achieve the highest cure rate with the first treatment, because a therapeutic failure is usually accompanied by the selection in the genome of the virus of mutations associated with resistance, which makes a salvage therapy more difficult and expensive.To select the optimal treatment for each patient it is essential to have the best possible diagnostic tools. Luckily, we have available the methodology of high resolution for HCV subtype based on massive sequencing, which allows to know with 100% security the virus subtype that infects a patient, to detect mixed infections (infection of more than one subtype of HCV at a time) and study which mutations associated with resistance presents the virus against the direct antiviral action. Having this high quality information allows us to customize the treatment to give patients the highest probability of eliminating the virus (viral cure) during the first treatment.With the technological change that we are living in VHIR, where we have the http://www.vhir.org/portal1/news-detail.asp?contentid=189341&s=actualitat&t=VHIR%20-%20Cercar%20not%EDcies first technology in the world in next next generation sequencing of single molecule(SMRT-NNGS) installed outside the premises of Roche, we will be able to reduce the time of diagnosis of hepatitis C, study long fragments of the virus genome (it even allows to sequence the whole entire virus at once) and see how different mutations are combined in each viral genome. In fact, this new technology can be applied to any disease that requires sequencing, or identifying infectious agents, genetic diseases or cancer. The great virtue of being able to obtain sequences up to 20,000 nucleotides and reading the genome and epigenome at the same time opens the door to resolving uncertainties in the diagnosis of hepatitis and many diseases".