Novel Targets and Advancements 18 in Drug Discovery: The Case of HIV-AIDS

Since the very first report of acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) in
the early 1980s in the United States, a number of advancements have taken place
both in the structural and functional aspects of the human immunodeficiency
virus (HIV) life cycle as well as anti-HIV drug design. While new drugs have
come to the market and combination therapies have increased life expectancy,
resistance and viral mutations have mandated introduction of new drugs in the
market. Apart from two main classes of HIV inhibitors (reverse transcriptase and
protease), new inhibitors targeting fusion and integration processes have provided
additional sites for therapy development. More recently inhibitors of maturation
and capsid assembly as well as viral replication have been studied to
provide novel anti-HIV drugs. In this chapter, we briefly discuss the HIV life
cycle and describe a few of the recent endeavors made to develop new anti-HIV
agents. For brevity, we provide a limited number of examples of discoveries
made in the main target sites of current HIV drug design.