Antiviral Strategies Targeting Capsid Proteins: Intervention from Assembly to Function
A special issue of International Journal of Molecular Sciences (ISSN 1422-0067). This special issue belongs to the section "Macromolecules".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 20 December 2025 | Viewed by 422
Special Issue Editor
Interests: supramolecular assembly; spectroscopic techniques; subtle structural variation
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted the pharmaceutical market globally, leading to a more urgent demand for antiviral strategies to effectively combat virus variants or drug resistance. Virus capsid proteins play crucial roles, including structural stability, gene encapsulation, and immunogenicity in the lifecycle, offering a novel target for vaccine design and therapeutic strategies. The win of the capsid-targeting anti-HIV drug, lenacapavir, at the Breakthrough of the Year of 2024 in Science will powerfully elicit improvements in global research in this field. Understanding the mechanism underlying and revealing active sites in viral capsid are of paramount importance for the development of antiviral therapeutics. The power to disrupt capsid or the formation of the oligomer holds great potential in inhibiting viral replication and/or function, thereby serving as a promising strategy in antiviruses. This comprehensive Special Issue aims to provide valuable insights not only in the form of novel experiments but also computer-aided molecular design on capsid assembly interventions, as well as the reveal of new active sites in versatile capsid proteins, for antiviral approaches.
Prof. Dr. Yuqing Wu
Guest Editor
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Keywords
- viral capsid protein
- assembly modulator/intervention
- virus variants
- antiviral therapeutics
- assembly–disassembly
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