Abstract
Six years ago, Sir Charles Stuart-Harris opened a Beecham Colloquium on Problems of Antiviral Therapy1 with a lecture entitled “Antiviral Chemotherapy: an Introduction and Apology for the Slow Progress”. Today, I think we no longer have to apologise; progress is still very slow but as I hope to show, there are many reasons for this, some of which are outside the control of scientists and given the constraints, no one can reasonably expect progress to be any faster.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Sir Charles H. Stuart-Harris, Antiviral chemotherapy: an introduction and apology for the slow progress, in: “Problems of Antiviral Therapy”, Sir Charles H. Stuart-Harris and J. Oxford, eds., Academic Press, New York, p. 1 (1983).
R.T. Walker, E. De Clercq, and F. Eckstein, “Nucleoside Analogues. Chemistry, Biology, and Medical Applications”, NATO Advanced Study Institutes Series. Series A: Life Sciences, Vol. 26, Plenum Press, New York (1979).
G.B. Elion, P.A. Furman, J.A. Fyfe, P. de Miranda, L. Beauchamp, and H.J. Schaeffer, Selectivity of action of an antiherpetic agent, 9-(2-hydroxyethoxymethyl)guanine, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 74:5716 (1977).
E. De Clercq and R.T. Walker, “Targets for the Design of Antiviral Agents”, NATO Advanced Study Institutes Series. Series A: Life Sciences, Vol. 73, Plenum Press, New York (1983).
W.H. Prusoff, T.-S. Lin, W.R. Mancini, M.J. Otto, S.A. Siegel, and J.J. Lee, Overview of the possible targets for viral chemotherapy, in “Targets for the Design of Antiviral Agents”, NATO Advanced Study Institutes Series. Series A: Life Sciences, Vol. 73, E. De Clercq and R.T. Walker, eds., Plenum Press, New York, p. 1 (1983).
H. Mitsuya and S. Broder, Strategies for antiviral therapy in AIDS, Nature 325:773 (1987).
M.R. Hilleman, Perspectives in disease prevention by vaccines, in: “Frontiers in Microbiology. From Antibiotics to AIDS”, E. De Clercq, ed., Martinus Nijhoff Publ., Dordrecht, p. 179 (1987).
P.C. Zamecnik, J. Goodchild, Y. Taguchi, and P.S. Sarin, Inhibition of replication and expression of human T-cell lymphotropic virus type III in cultured cells by exogenous synthetic oligonucleotides complementary to viral RNA, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 83:4143 (1986).
K.A. Watanabe, U. Reichman, K. Hirota, C. Lopez, and J.J. Fox, Nucleosides. 110. Synthesis and antiherpes virus activity of some 2’-fluoro-2’-deoxyarabinofuranosylpyrimidine nucleosides, J. Med. Chem. 22:21 (1979).
E. De Clercq and R.T. Walker, Chemotherapeutic agents for herpesvirus infections, Progress Med. Chem. 23:187 (1986).
W.R. Mancini, E. De Clercq, and W.H. Prusoff, The relationship between incorporation of E-5-(2-bromovinyl)-2,-deoxyuridine into herpes simplex virus type 1 DNA with virus infectivity and DNA integrity, J. Biol. Chem. 258:792 (1983).
H. Marquardt, J. Westendorf, E. De Clercq, and H. Marquardt, Potent anti-viral 5-(2-bromovinyl)-uracil nucleosides are inactive at inducing gene mutations in Salmonella typhimurium and V79 Chinese hamster cells and unscheduled DNA synthesis in primary rat hepatocytes, Car cinogenesis 6:1207 (1985).
J. Balzarini, E. De Clercq, D. Ayusawa, and T. Seno, Murine mammary FM3A carcinoma cells transformed with the herpes simplex virus type 1 thymidine kinase gene are highly sensitive to the growth-inhibitory properties of (E)-5-(2-bromovinyl)-2’-deoxyuridine and related compounds, FEBS Lett. 185:95 (1985).
K. Shimizu, L. Ren, D. Ayusawa, T. Seno, J. Balzarini, and E. De Clercq, Establishment of mutant murine mammary carcinoma FM3A cell strains transformed with the herpes simplex virus type 2 thymidine kinase gene, Cell Structure Functions 11:295 (1986).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1988 Plenum Press, New York
About this paper
Cite this paper
Walker, R.T. (1988). Antiviral Chemotherapy: An Introduction and Reasons for the Slow Progress, Particularly towards Rational Design. In: De Clercq, E., Walker, R.T. (eds) Antiviral Drug Development. NATO ASI Series, vol 143. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-7275-2_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-7275-2_1
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-1-4684-7277-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-4684-7275-2
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive