News Releases & Research Results Small-molecule anti-HIV active compounds targeting HIV-1 capsid protein - Development of novel therapeutic agents for drug-resistant viruses -

The results of collaborative research conducted by Professor Hirokazu Tamamura of the Department of Medicinal Chemistry, Institute of Biomaterials and Bioengineering, Tokyo Medical and Dental University and Senior Researcher Hironori Sato of the Pathogen Genomics Center and Senior Researcher Tsutomu Murakami of the AIDS Research Center, National Institute of Infectious Diseases.

• By targeting “capsid,” a shell that encloses the RNA of anti-human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), novel small-molecule anti-HIV active compounds were successfully developed by in silico screening, inhibitor designing by molecular modeling, and organic synthesis.
• The capsid sequence highly conserved among various HIV strains may be useful in developing anti-HIV agents that were less likely to cause mutant virus strains.
• The results of this research should facilitate the development of novel anti-HIV agents with new sites of action.

This project was conducted with the support of the Platform Project for Supporting Drug Discovery and Life Science Research (BINDS) by AMED.

The results were published online in Biomolecules on February 3.

Kobayakawa T., et al. Small-molecule anti-HIV-1 agents based on HIV-1 capsid proteins Biomolecules
DOI: 10.3390/biom11020208