Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a major cause of liver disease worldwide.HCV infection is associated with high morbidity and has become a major problem in public health.Until now, there has been no effective prophylactic or therapeutic vaccine.BCG, a live vaccine typically used for tuberculosis prevention, has been increasingly utilized as a vector for the expression of recombinant proteins that will induce specific humoral and cellular immune responses.In this study, recombinant BCG (rBCG) was engineered to express an HCV multi-epitope antigen, and used to induce specific anti-HCV responses in HLA-A2.1 transgenic mice.Specific anti-HCV antibodies were detected in the serum, and HCV-specific proliferation, cytokine production, and cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) activation were observed.These results indicate that rBCG can induce HCV specific humoral and cellular immune responses and suggests that BCG may serve as an effective vaccine tvector against HCV infection.