Successful Strategies for the Discovery of Antiviral Drugs

Book excerpt: The antiviral therapeutic area continues to rapidly generate meaningful new chemical entities; for example, for HIV alone more than 25 drugs have been approved, and in the next few years many individual drugs and single tablet regimens will be approved for the treatment of hepatitis C virus infection. The increasing success in the antiviral area could be due to targeting drugs at "non-self" genomes and to the patient population that is tolerant of manageable side effects and adaptable to inconvenient dosing. Aimed at medicinal chemists and emerging drug discovery scientists, the book is organized according to the various strategies deployed for the discovery and optimization of initial lead compounds. This book focuses on capturing tactical aspects of problem solving in antiviral drug design, an approach that holds special appeal for those engaged in antiviral drug development, but also appeals to the broader medicinal chemistry community based on its focus on tactical aspects of drug design.