Fig. 3: Strategy for therapeutic and prophylactic development of novel antiviral agents.
From: Unconventional viral gene expression mechanisms as therapeutic targets
a, A balance between viral inhibition and host toxicity underlies therapeutic development. Targeting viral-specific functions or host functions that are more important (in a given time frame) to the virus than the host paves the way for the generation of therapeutic agents. b, Cis-acting nucleic-acid structural elements that are involved in unconventional viral expression mechanisms (such as pseudoknots in PRFs, and stem loops in polymerase slippage sites and IRES) can be directly targeted by small molecules, host factors and antisense oligonucleotides (AON) or indirectly targeted by modulating the related host factors. c, Targeting of virus-specific processes in gene expression (such as cap-snatching and RdRp) that are shared among viruses and not found in hosts offers a high specificity for antiviral agents. The targeting of host dependencies that are used by several virus provides an alternative route to pan-viral therapeutic agents.
