Wits University is hoping to pinpoint the gene sequences that inactivate the virus that causes hepatitis B, an illness carried by over 380 million people worldwide, the university said on Thursday.
In a statement ahead of hepatitis Day on Friday, Wits said that it is using new technology to try to stop hepatitis B from recurring in the body and had already submitted some of the aspects of the study for patenting.
According to Professor Patrick Arbuthnot, head of the Wits hepatitis B virus (HBV) research programme, approximately 25 percent of the world's chronic carriers of the virus will develop liver cancer.
"HBV is endemic to sub-Saharan Africa, east and south east Asia and the western Pacific islands where it is one of the key environmental risk factors that predisposes chronic carriers to liver cancer and cirrhosis.
"When compared, the link between hepatitis B and liver cancer is at least as strong as that between smoking and lung cancer," he said in a statement.
He said it was accepted that the virus alters the gene properties in human liver cells to cause cancer - in South Africa this usually develops during early adulthood and has a particularly grave prognosis.
Most patients die within three months of diagnosis of the malignancy.
"There is definitely a need for the development of a new treatment of HBV to prevent the serious complications of chronic infection with the virus."
About five percent of babies born in sub-Saharan Africa are vaccinated against the virus but it is not effective for people already infected.
He said existing drugs were largely ineffective in sub-Saharan Africa because they are designed to treat patients in whom the virus replicates rapidly and in sub-Saharan Africa, the rate of replication of the virus is slower.
"The ultimate goal is to find an effective treatment for hepatitis B for people living in sub-Saharan Africa," Arbuthnot said.
The team expects to know within about two years whether the therapy will work or not. - Sapa