Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2010 Mar 2;3(3):448-470.
doi: 10.3390/ph3030448.

Cell-Penetrating Peptides for Antiviral Drug Development

Melaine Delcroix  1 , Lee W Riley  2
Affiliations
Review

Cell-Penetrating Peptides for Antiviral Drug Development

Melaine Delcroix et al. Pharmaceuticals (Basel). .

Abstract

Viral diseases affect hundreds of millions of people worldwide, and the few available drugs to treat these diseases often come with limitations. The key obstacle to the development of new antiviral agents is their delivery into infected cells in vivo. Cell-penetrating peptides (CPPs) are short peptides that can cross the cellular lipid bilayer with the remarkable capability to shuttle conjugated cargoes into cells. CPPs have been successfully utilized to enhance the cellular uptake and intracellular trafficking of antiviral molecules, and thereby increase the inhibitory activity of potential antiviral proteins and oligonucleotide analogues, both in cultured cells and in animal models. This review will address the notable findings of these studies, highlighting some promising results and discussing the challenges CPP technology has to overcome for further clinical applications.

Keywords: antisense; antivirals; cell-penetrating peptide; drug delivery.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Mechanisms of antiviral activity exerted by CPP conjugates. These antiviral agents can target retroviruses, as shown for HIV, non-retroviral RNA viruses, as shown for the negative-sense RNA EBOV and HCV, and DNA viruses, as shown for HSV. Interference with viral RNA processing and translation further inhibits viral replication. CPP conjugates can also be designed to target virus-infected cells. CPP can also inactivate the virion and render cells resistant to infection, inhibiting cell infection. proCasp3 stands for pro-caspase 3; RT stands for reverse transcription; Tn stands for transportan.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Haagmans B.L., Andeweg A.C., Osterhaus A. The Application of Genomics to Emerging Zoonotic Viral Diseases. PLos Pathog. 2009;5:5. - PMC - PubMed
    1. De Clercq E. Antivirals and antiviral strategies. Nat. Rev. Microbiol. 2004;2:704–720. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Rerks-Ngarm S., Pitisuttithum P., Nitayaphan S., Kaewkungwal J., Chiu J., Paris R., Premsri N., Namwat C., de Souza M., Adams E., Benenson M., Gurunathan S., Tartaglia J., McNeil J.G., Francis D.P., Stablein D., Birx D.L., Chunsuttiwat S., Khamboonruang C., Thongcharoen P., Robb M.L., Michael N.L., Kunasol P., Kim J.H., Investigators M.-T. Vaccination with ALVAC and AIDSVAX to Prevent HIV-1 Infection in Thailand. N. Engl. J. Med. 2009;361:2209–2220. - PubMed
    1. Wedemeyer H., Schuller E., Schlaphoff V., Stauber R.E., Wiegand J., Schiefke I., Firbas C., Jilma B., Thursz M., Zeuzem S., Hofmann W.P., Hinrichsen H., Tauber E., Manns M.P., Klade C.S. Therapeutic vaccine IC41 as late add-on to standard treatment in patients with chronic hepatitis C. Vaccine. 2009;27:5142–5151. - PubMed
    1. De Clercq E. The design of drugs for HIV and HCV. Nat. Rev. Drug Discov. 2007;6:1001–1018. - PubMed