Abstract
Viral infections are a global disease burden with only a limited number of antiviral agents available. Due to newly emerging viral pathogens and increasing occurrence of drug resistance, there is a continuous need for additional therapeutic options, preferably with extended target range. In the present study, we describe a novel antiviral peptide with broad activity against several double-stranded DNA viruses. The 22-mer peptide TAT-I24 potently neutralized viruses such as herpes simplex viruses, adenovirus type 5, cytomegalovirus, vaccinia virus, and simian virus 40 in cell culture models, while being less active against RNA viruses. The peptide TAT-I24 therefore represents a novel and promising drug candidate for use against double-stranded DNA viruses.
Highlights
Effective therapeutic intervention by antiviral agents is still limited to specific viral infections, such as those caused by influenza A virus, herpes viruses, including herpes simplex virus (HSV) and cytomegalovirus (CMV), as well as hepatitis B and C
We describe the discovery of a novel, 22-mer peptide, which has the ability to inhibit gene expression and replication in vitro of double-stranded DNA viruses of multiple and diverse taxa, including baculovirus infecting mammalian cells, adenovirus type 5, herpes simplex viruses, cytomegalovirus, simian virus 40 (SV40) polyomavirus, and vaccinia virus
RNA viruses and the retrovirus human immunodeficiency virus-1 (HIV-1) are less sensitive to inhibition by the peptide
Summary
Effective therapeutic intervention by antiviral agents is still limited to specific viral infections, such as those caused by influenza A virus, herpes viruses, including herpes simplex virus (HSV) and cytomegalovirus (CMV), as well as hepatitis B and C. Strenuous efforts have been invested in the treatment of infections by human immunodeficiency virus-1 (HIV-1) with various efficient antiviral agents available (Littler and Oberg, 2005; De Clercq and Li, 2016). These include reverse transcriptase, integrase, and protease inhibitors One example of a peptide drug is the viral fusion inhibitor enfuvirtide (Fuzeon ), an approved drug for treatment of HIV (Matthews et al, 2004)
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