Abstract
The hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is a major risk factor for cirrhosis and hepatocellularcarcinoma. Most infected individuals become lifelong carriers of HBV as the drugs currently usedto treat the patients can only control the disease, thereby achieving functional cure (loss of thehepatitis B surface antigen) but not complete cure (elimination of infected hepatocytes). Therefore,we aimed to identify the target genes for the selective killing of HBV-positive hepatocytes to developa novel therapy for the treatment of HBV infection. Our strategy was to recognize the conditionallyessential genes that are essential for the survival of HBV-positive hepatocytes, but non-essentialfor the HBV-negative hepatocytes. Using microarray gene expression data curated from the GeneExpression Omnibus database and the known essential genes from the Online GEne Essentialitydatabase, we used two approaches, comprising the random walk with restart algorithm and thesupport vector machine approach, to determine the potential targets for the selective killing ofHBV-positive hepatocytes. The final candidate genes list obtained using these two approachesconsisted of36 targetgenes, which may be conditionally essential for the cell survival of HBV-positive hepatocytes; however, this requires further experimental validation. Therefore, the genesidentified in this study can be used as potential drug targets to develop novel therapeutic strategiesfor the treatment of HBV, and may ultimately help in achieving the elusive goal of a complete curefor hepatitis B.