While HIV has undoubtedly been the viral focus of attention in recent years, hepatitis C virus (HCV) is now forcing its way onto the world's healthcare stage. The new attention that HCV has received since the beginning of the year is well deserved - this virus infects 5 times as many people as HIV worldwide. One reason for this is that no effective screening test existed for HCV, which is transmitted via the blood, prior to 1986 and it took an additional 6 years to develop a reliable blood test. Thus, vast numbers of individuals joined the ranks of infected patients via transmission of tainted blood products. Consequently, millions of people are now moving through the natural course of the disease at varying speeds, and in an effort to divert catastrophe, researchers and clinicians are hurriedly trying to apply the therapeutic lessons learned from HIV to HCV. The potential market size for therapeutic intervention is huge and it is no surprise that several major pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies are involved in what has become an extremely competitive field.