Recently, Lai has shifted much of his research efforts to the hepatitis C virus. He counts hepatitis C among the most dangerous infectious diseases in the United States right now. Already, four million Americans are believed to be chronic carriers of the virus. About 20 percent of the chronic carriers of the virus will go on to develop more serious liver disease, including cirrhosis and cancer. The virus was only identified in 1989, and there's still much that scientists don't know about it.
Receptors are an important part of the story of how viruses cause infection.
What's more, no one knows how to grow hepatitis C in the lab. That means that any research on how the virus replicates in cells is incredibly difficult. But Lai and his research group have managed to study the function of some of the viral genes. Lai suspects that this may help explain how the virus is able to escape the immune system's attack and so can develop into a chronic infection in many patients. It may also explain how the virus damages the liver and causes hepatitis.