1Seventy million people worldwide are chronically infected with hepatitis C virus (HCV). Chronic HCV infection is associated with an elevated risk of developing liver cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma (1). HCV is a single-stranded, positivesense RNA virus that belongs to the Flaviviridae family. The viral RNA encodes a single polyprotein of about 3,100 amino acids, which is cleaved co-and posttranslationally by cellular and viral proteases into 10 viral proteins: the structural proteins (core, E1, E2), which build up the viral particles; the p7 polypeptide, which forms an ion channel; and the nonstructural (NS) proteins (NS2, NS3, NS4A, NS4B, NS5A, and NS5B), which support viral replication and assembly processes (2-5).NS5A is known to act as a regulator of intracellular signal transduction cascades. The kinase c-Raf was identified to bind to the C-terminal domain of NS5A. Thereby, c-Raf is located at the HCV replication complex (6, 7). The interaction of NS5A with c-Raf leads to the activation of c-Raf in association with the phosphorylation of c-Raf at serine 338 (6, 7). Moreover, it was found that inhibition of c-Raf blocks HCV replication (6,8). However, due to the delocalization of c-Raf to the replicon complex/endoplasmic reticulum (ER) membrane, c-Raf in HCV-replicating cells is withdrawn from the classic MEK/extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) signaling pathway (6). Therefore, although c-Raf is activated in HCV-replicating cells, signal transduction to the MEK/ERK pathway is impaired.The HCV infection cycle is tightly associated with lipid metabolism. HCV replication occurs on the cytoplasmic face of the ER in the replication complexes (RCs) formed by nonstructural proteins. HCV replication and morphogenesis take place at specialized rearranged intracellular ER membranes, the socalled membranous web, that are enriched in proteins involved