Hit Viruses

Hit them where they live

Viruses that infect us can't spread without us. Finding their helpers inside human cells may yield drugs that stop pandemics.

Within a few months of the outbreak of swine flu last spring, public health officials reported the first cases resistant to Tamiflu. It was no surprise. The previous winter most cases of seasonal flu had also proved resistant to the drug. Why don't we have antivirals as good as antibiotics are against bacteria? Viruses are willer, they mutate best designed drugs, but researchers are now working on a radical new strategy that just might antiviral equivalent of amoxicillin. The idea is simple : Instead of attacking viruses directly, target the human cells they infect.

Bacteria are organisms that are equipped to reproduce themselves : antibiotics attack that machinery. But a virus is a parasite : It invades a host cell and co-opts the cell's own machinery to make copies of itself thousands of chances to mutate and develop drug resistance. A drug that disables a part of the human cell that helps the virus reproduce, though, could stop it with little risk of resistance. "and if you can identify a host function that HIV, flu and Ebola all require, you can have one drug that is active against all three a board spectrum antiviral," says Michael Kurilla of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

to be continued . . . .