RT Book, Section
A1 Acosta, Edward P.
A2 Brunton, Laurence L.
A2 Knollmann, Björn C.
SR Print(0)
ID 1193239925
T1 Antiviral Agents (Nonretroviral)
T2 Goodman & Gilman's: The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics, 14th Edition
YR 2023
FD 2023
PB McGraw-Hill Education
PP New York, NY
SN 9781264258079
LK accessmedicine.mhmedical.com/content.aspx?aid=1193239925
RD 2024/04/24
AB Most  antivirals  currently  available  in  the  U.S.  have  been  developed  and  approved  in  the  last  35  years.  This  flurry  of  activity  was  driven  by  successes  in  rational  drug  design  and  approval  that  began  with  the  antiherpesvirus  nucleoside  analogue  acyclovir  (Elion,  1986),  whose  discovery  and  development  resulted  in  the  awarding  of  the  1988  Nobel  Prize  in  Physiology/Medicine  to  Gertrude  Elion  and  George  Hitchings,  an  award  they  shared  with  James  Black  (see  Chapter  43)  “for  their  discoveries  of  important  principles  for  drug  treatment.”  Because  viruses  are  obligatory  intracellular  microorganisms  and  rely  on  host  biosynthetic  machinery  to  reproduce,  there  were  doubts  about  the  possibility  of  developing  antiviral  drugs  with  selective  toxicity,  but  those  doubts  have  long  been  erased.  Viruses  are  now  obvious  targets  for  effective  antimicrobial  chemotherapy,  and  it  is  certain  that  the  number  of  available  agents  in  this  category  will  continue  to  increase.  Indeed,  the  recent  development  of  agents  that  target  the  viral  protein  NS5A  has  revolutionized  treatment  of  infections  of  hepatitis  B  virus  (HBV)  and  hepatitis  C  virus  (HCV),  and  these  agents  are  now  allotted  a  chapter  of  their  own,  Chapter  63.  Chapter  64  describes  chemotherapy  for  retroviruses.  This  chapter  covers  antiviral  agents  for  nonretroviral  infections  other  than  HBV  and  HCV.