B. Sharma
Professor of Biochemistry & Ex-Chairman, University of Allahabad, India
Title: New targets for drug development against HIV-1
Biography
Biography: B. Sharma
Abstract
Recently, WHO have reported that 35.3 million people were living with HIV/AIDS (PLWH) globally at the end of 2012 which included about 0.8% of adults aged 15-49 years. National AIDS Control Organization (NACO) of India has shown the prevalence of AIDS in India in 2013 to be 0.27 million. In the low and middle income countries with resource limited settings, more than 8 million PLWH were receiving antiretroviral therapy (ART) at the end of 2011. Application of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) worldwide has been able to significantly reduce the mortality and morbidity of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) infected individuals. However, the appearance of clinical drug resistance in AIDS patients due to various factors including nonadherance to medication (intake of antiretroviral) has been found to be associated to chemotherapeutic and virologic failure. In addition, high rate of viral replication, appearance of heterogenous circulating viral quasispecies, infidelity in proviral cDNA synthesis as well as immunological and pharmacological factors are also associated to drug resistance. The present research paper describes our understanding on the mechanistic aspect of drug resistance in HIV-1 against the application of the second generation antiretrovirals and possible strategies to encounter the issue. The recent approaches to explore new targets for actions for specific actions of the antiretrovirals and to develop target-structure based new small molecules with least toxicity to the host would be discussed.