Design of Anti-AIDS Drugs (Pharmacochemistry Library)

There are several steps in the replicative cycle of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that could be considered as adequate targets for chemotherapeutic intervention, e.g., virus attachment to the cells, virus penetration and uncoating, transcription of the viral (RNA) genome to proviral DNA, integration of the proviral DNA into host cell DNA, transcription of the proviral precursor proteins to mature viral proteins, assembly and release ('budding') of the viral particles. These processes depend on, and are regulated by, specific viral proteins. This makes many of these processes and proteins plausible targets for the design of selective inhibitors. The contributions assembled in this book are aimed at presenting what is known anno 1990 about (1) the different steps in the HIV replicative cycle that could be considered as targets for anti-HIV agents, (2) the compounds that interact with these targets and offer promise as candidate drugs for the treatment of HIV infection, and (3) to the extent that it has been resolved, the mechanism of interaction of the anti-HIV agents with their putative targets.