HIV drug stops Zika infection, strategy could halt infections caused by related viruses

From Science Daily
October 30, 2019

Like an adjustable wrench that becomes the “go-to” tool because it is effective and can be used for a variety of purposes, an existing drug that can be adapted to halt the replication of different viruses would greatly expedite the treatment of different infectious diseases. Such a strategy would prevent thousands of deaths each year from diseases like dengue and Ebola, but whether it can be done has been unclear. Now, in new work, researchers at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University (LKSOM) show that repurposing an existing drug to treat viral diseases is in fact possible — potentially bypassing the decades needed to develop such a broad-spectrum drug from scratch.

In a new study published in the journal Molecular Therapy, the Temple researchers report that a drug used in the treatment of HIV also suppresses Zika virus infection. In cell and animal models, they show that the drug, called rilpivirine, stops Zika virus by targeting enzymes that both HIV and Zika virus depend on for their replication. These enzymes occur in other viruses closely related to Zika, including the viruses that cause dengue, yellow fever, West Nile fever, and hepatitis C.

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