Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is a global public health problem. The infection can lead to acute and chronic hepatitis, which makes liver prone to develop cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma [
1]. Although an effective vaccine has been used for 20 years in many countries, there are still about 350 million chronic carriers of HBV worldwide, and approximately 1 million people die from HBV-related liver diseases each year [
2]. The currently approved agents for the treatment of HBV infection include immunomodulatory agents, such as interferon-α (IFN-α) and pegylated IFN-α, and oral nucleoside/nucleotide analogues, like lamivudine, adefovir, telbivudine, entecavir and tenofovir [
3,
4]. However, the major drawback of nucleoside/nucleotide analogues therapies is the development of drug resistance mutations with long-term treatment [
3], and the disadvantages to using interferon-α are its various side effects and inconvenience of administration [
4]. Therefore, exploring and developing new anti-HBV agents different from nucleoside/nucleotide analogues and interferon are urgently needed.
Fucoidan is a natural sulfated polysaccharide that extracted from different species of brown seaweed [
5], which was reported to exhibit numerous biological activities, including anti-bacterial, anti-oxidant, anti-coagulant, anti-viral, anti-tumor, and anti-inflammatory effects [
6‐
10]. These functional properties of fucoidan make it an attractive candidate for the development of biomaterials and drugs. Fucoidan isolated from
Fucus vesiculosus is composed of 44.1% fucose, 26.3% sulfate, 31.1% ash, and a small amount of aminoglucose, which is commercially available now [
5]. It has undergone extensive in vitro, in vivo as well as human clinical testing, and has also been shown to have a range of biological properties, including beneficial effects in the areas of inflammation, immune modulation, and enzyme inhibition [
11]. There are several literatures concerning the anti-viral bioactivity of fucoidan isolated from
Fucus vesiculosus [
11‐
13]. Beress et al.
, described an anti-human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) activity of some fractions of self-produced
Fucus vesiculosus fucoidan [
12]. Besides, fucoidan displayed antiviral activities against influenza A infection by different subtypes [
14,
15]. A recent clinical study showed that treatment with fucoidan suppressed the expression of hepatitis C virus (HCV) replicon, accompanied by limited serum alanine aminotransferase levels, in HCV-infected patients [
16]. However, it remains to be studied whether and how fucoidan inhibits HBV replication in vivo and in vitro.