Small Molecules Targeting Viral Polymerases
A special issue of Pharmaceuticals (ISSN 1424-8247). This special issue belongs to the section "Medicinal Chemistry".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (25 March 2024) | Viewed by 17147
Special Issue Editors
Interests: medicinal chemistry; computer-aided drug discovery; anti-infective and neurodegenerative diseases; cancer
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: medicinal chemistry; computer-aided drug discovery; anti-infective agents; kinase inhibitors
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The magnitude of the sudden and unpredictable COVID-19 pandemic has drawn global attention to both new and re-emerging viruses as pathogens responsible for current and future health threats. In addition, the development of resistance against antiviral drugs used in therapy for established viruses represents one of the major challenges of healthcare.
Thus, there is a pressing need to find efficacious novel drugs to treat viral diseases. In this context, the discovery and development of small molecules targeting viral polymerases is a field of great interest. Indeed, these enzymes are attractive targets for the identification of effective antiviral drugs as they lack mammalian homologs and are central components in the life cycles of viruses, playing a key role in viral genome replication and transcription. As a successful example, Remdesevir and Molnupiravir—both recently approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for emergency use to treat COVID-19—are small-molecule inhibitors of SARS-COV-2 RNA-dependent RNA polymerase.
Furthermore, viral polymerases offer promising opportunities to combat multiple viral pathogens through the development of broad-spectrum antivirals as the structures of these essential enzymes are comparatively well conserved across viral classes. It is also noteworthy that intensive structural and functional studies of viral polymerases have been reported over the years, offering new avenues for the rational discovery of more effective antiviral agents.
In this Special Issue entitled “Small molecules targeting viral polymerases”, Pharmaceuticals welcomes high-quality reviews and original research articles focused on the investigation of novel small molecules targeting viral polymerases, as well as on structural and functional studies aimed at increasing the knowledge on these key enzymes.
Dr. Maria Letizia Barreca
Dr. Andrea Astolfi
Guest Editors
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Keywords
- small molecules
- antiviral agents
- viruses
- RNA-dependent RNA polymerase
- RNA-dependent DNA polymerase
- DNA-dependent DNA polymerase
- inhibitors
- drug design
- computer-aided drug discovery
- drug repositioning
- emerging diseases
- infectious diseases
- drug resistance
- broad-spectrum antivirals
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