Toronto: Scientists have found a way to block the Hepatitis C virus (HCV) and possibly benefit 170 million people worldwide.

The breakthrough opens the way for new therapies to treat HCV which targets the liver and is among the leading causes of liver cancer and liver transplant globally.

"Our approach would essentially be to block the lifecycle of the virus so that it cannot spread and cause further damage to the liver," says François Jean, associate professor of microbiology and immunology, University of British Columbia, who led the study.

HCV is spread by blood-to-blood contact and there is no vaccine to prevent it. Current treatments are only moderately effective but come with serious side-effects.

"As HCV infects a person, it needs fat droplets in the liver to form new virus particles and ultimately leads to chronic dysfunction of the organ," said Jean.

"HCV is constantly mutating, which makes it difficult to develop antiviral therapies that target the virus itself. So we decided to take a new approach," added Jean.

Jean and his team developed an inhibitor that decreases the size of host fat droplets in liver cells and stops HCV from "taking residence," multiplying and infecting other cells.

According to Jean, this new approach could translate into similar therapies for other related re-emerging viruses that can cause serious and life threatening infections, such as dengue virus.

Dengue is endemic in more than 100 countries, with approximately 2.5 billion people at the risk of infection globally. In some countries, dengue has become the leading cause of child mortality.