实验动物总则

Compared to the wide range of antibiotics that are available, the number of antiviral drugs is limited. However, herpesviruses have always been a major target for antiviral drug design, and there are a wide range of drugs at various stages of development. All of the assays described in this chapter pr ...

In this chapter, the development of a 96-well plate increasing signal helicase assay will be described. The authors have used this assay to detect inhibitors of hepatitis C virus (HCV) NS3/4A RNA helicase.

Human herpesviruses 6 and 7 are ubiquitous herpesviruses that normally infect their hosts early in life. There are two variant groups of human herpesvirus 6 (HHV-6): variants A (HHV-6A) and B (HHV-6B). Variant A has not been unambiguously associated with a specific disease but may contribute to di ...

Evaluation of antiviral agents against Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) has been hampered by the lack of a permissive cell system for the replication of this virus. The extent of EBV replication detected in producer cell lines (P3HR-1 and B95-8) is limited: only a small fraction (

Herpesviruses encode a serine protease that is essential for the maturation of viral capsids (1,2). The protease is expressed as part of a polyprotein. The catalytic domain is contained within the N-terminal third of the protein, and the remainder comprises a structural “scaffold” protein. T ...

There is currently considerable interest in the possibility of developing a potent, nontoxic anti-HIV agent that could be used intravaginally to reduce the risks of transmission of HIV. Worldwide up to 80% of HIV infections have been acquired heterosexually. Projections suggest that by t ...

It is critically important that new therapeutic compounds and targets for therapeutic intervention be identified in the battle against the human immunodeficieny virus type 1(HIV-1). Many of the currently existing therapeutic approaches target virus-specific factors involv ...

This chapter describes the procedures that can be used to determine compounds that have antiviral activity against HIV. These include: maintenance of lymphoblastoid cell lines, preparation of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PMMCs), and determination of the infectivity of the ...

When evaluating potential antiviral compounds, determining the effect of the drug on virus replication is usually the prime concern. However, since virus replication is dependent on the host cell, in circumstances where virus infection is not rapidly lytic to cells, the effect of these com ...

The high replication rate of HIV, together with the low fidelity of its reverse transcriptase, provides the virus with an unprecedented genomic flexibility. This allows a fast adaptation to selective pressure, including antiviral drugs, resulting in the development of drug-resista ...

The human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) belongs to the family of positive-stranded, enveloped RNA viruses with a DNA intermediate step (retroviruses). Because of the lack of fidelity of the reverse transcriptase (RT), the replication is error-prone, and the infection is characte ...

HIV, the etiologic agent of AIDS, is a retrovirus of the family Lentiviridae, first isolated in 1983 by the group of Luc Montagnier at the Pasteur Institute of Paris (1). In the following years, much effort has been, and still is, focused on the search for antiviral drugs that would help to control the course of the ...

Reverse transcriptase (RT) has attracted particular attention as a target enzyme for AIDS chemotherapy, because the enzyme catalyzes a crucial step in the HIV replicative cycle. Effective inhibition of this enzyme prevents the formation of proviral DNA. RT is endowed with three indepen ...

Retroviruses are widely prevalent among vertebrates and are the causative agents of a variety of diseases in humans and animals including immunodeficiences, leukemias, and lymphomas (1). The retrovirus family is characterized by the presence of virion-associated reverse trans ...

All replication-competent retroviruses possess a characteristic enzyme, reverse transcriptase (RT), which is present at 20–70 mol/virus particle (1–3). The enzyme is cleaved, and thereby activated, from an inactive precursor by the action of another retroviral enzyme, the viral pro ...

HIV protease catalyzes the hydrolysis of specific peptide bonds of viral polyproteins, thus processing these polyproteins into their active components. These protein processing reactions are requisite for viral replication. Therefore, the HIV protease is an ideal target for the c ...

Two critical events are the signature of the life cycle of retroviruses (1). The first is reverse transcription, whereby the single-stranded RNA genome of the retrovirus is copied into double-stranded DNA. The second of these events is integration, whereby this viral DNA is inserted into a chro ...

Papillomavirus genomes replicate and are maintained as stable extrachromosomal plasmid DNA (episomes) in many cell lines (reviewed in ref. 1). This process requires the viral E1 and E2 proteins and the origin of replication (2,3). The minimal origin of replication consists of an E1 binding si ...

Human papillomaviruses (HPV) comprise a genus in the species Papovaviridae, which consist of small, naked icosahedral viruses containing circular dsDNA. HPV types 16 and 18 infect squamous epithelium of the genitalia and may infect as many as 45% of the female population in developed count ...

Viruses that are less sensitive to the influenza neuraminidase (NA)-specific inhibitor 4-guanidino-Neu5Ac2en (zanamavir) (1) can be isolated after several passages in MDCK cells in the presence of the inhibitor. Although there are three reports of a mutation in the NA gene at the same conse ...