Strategies of Antiviral Drugs

Antibiotics which have revolutionized the control of diseases caused by bacteria and some new pathogenic agents are utterly ineffective against viruses, because the viruses get your hands on not have a cell and they are heavily dependent a propos the host cell for multiplication.

Therefore, the desire sites at which antibiotics combat in bacteria are lacking in viruses. For example, the 3-lactam antibiotics bearing in mind penicillins and cephalosporins or cephamycins interfere following bacterial cell wall, a structure which is absent in animal cells.

Many antibiotics are targeted adjoining prokaryotic protein synthesis. Thus, antibiotics can selectively ill feeling those peculiarities of bacteria which are absent in the host cells. Development of breathing antiviral drugs similarly depends in symbol to searching out ample strive for sites.

The attainable targets for antiviral drugs could be:

(i) Attachment of the virion upon the host cell membrane. If the virus is prevented from association to the direct cell, the virus cannot multiply or cause any damage. As the virions interact subsequent to specific receptors puff upon the surface of the host cell, one strategy could be an antiviral drug which resembles the receptor chemically for that defense that the virion mistakes it as a real receptor and binds to it on the other hand of the objective cell.

An swap available could be to block the surface proteins of the virions, as a result that they can no longer interact as soon as the host receptor sites. Antibodies produced against viral surface antigens could support such a endeavor effectively.

(ii) Many animal viruses enter the host cells by an endocytic lane in which the virion  either when or without envelope  are endocytosed, and the un-coating and forgive of nucleic cutting understand place in the endocytic vesicle. A doable intention site of an antiviral drug could be prevention of un-coating.

(iii) Some viruses, along furthermore the retroviruses, carry enzymes in their virions which are needed for their replication and which are absent in the host cell. So, unorthodox strategy of antiviral drugs could be to inhibit those viral enzymes, so that replication of the virus could be prevented. Generally, nucleotide analogues possess handsome possibilities to be used as such inhibitors.