HIV-1 protease inhibitors are part of the highly active antiretroviral therapy effectively used in the treatment of HIV infection and AIDS. Darunavir (DRV) is the most potent of these inhibitors, soliciting drug resistance only when a complex combination of mutations occur both inside and outside the protease active site. With few exceptions, the role of mutations outside the active site in con...

HIV-1 protease represents an appealing system for directed enzyme re-design, since it has various different endogenous targets, a relatively simple structure and it is well studied. Recently Chaudhury and Gray (Structure (2009) 17: 1636-1648) published a computational algorithm to discern the specificity determining residues of HIV-1 protease. In this paper we present two computational tools ai...

HIV protease inhibitors are key components of HIV antiretroviral therapies, which are fundamental in the treatment of HIV infection. However, the protease inhibitors are well-known to induce metabolic dysfunction which can in turn escalate the complications of HIV, including HIV associated neurocognitive disorders. As experimental and epidemiological data support a therapeutic role for adiponec...

HIV-1 virions are highly enriched in cholesterol relative to the cellular plasma membrane. We recently reported that a cholesterol-binding compound, amphotericin B methyl ester (AME), blocks HIV-1 entry and that single amino acid substitutions in the cytoplasmic tail of the transmembrane envelope glycoprotein gp41 confer resistance to AME. In this study, we defined the mechanism of resistance t...

Finding the ultimate HIV cure remain a challenging tasks for decades. Various active compounds have been tested against various components of the virus in the effort to halt the virus development in infected host. The idea of finding cure from known pharmacologically active natural occurring compounds is intriguing and practical. Ganoderma lucidum (Ling-Zhi or Reishi) is one of the most product...

Several animal viruses inhibit host protein synthesis, but only some members of the picornavirus group are known to do so by cleaving translation initiation factor eIF4G. Here we report that infection of human CD4(+) cells with HIV-1 also leads to proteolysis of eIF4G and profound inhibition of cellular translation. Purified HIV-1 protease directly cleaves eIF4GI at positions 678, 681, and 1086...

MOTIVATION In order to design effective HIV inhibitors, studying and understanding the mechanism of HIV protease cleavage specification is critical. Various methods have been developed to explore the specificity of HIV protease cleavage activity. However, success in both extracting discriminant rules and maintaining high prediction accuracy is still challenging. The earlier study had employed g...

In this review we summarize multiple aspects of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) protease from both structural and functional viewpoints. After an introductory overview, we provide an up-to-date status report on protease inhibitors (PI). This proceeds from a discussion of PI structural design, to how PI are optimally utilized in highly active antiretroviral triple therapy (one PI along wi...

Etravirine is an effective and well-tolerated recently approved non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor (NNRTI) for HIV type-1-infected patients with previous antiretroviral treatment experience. Considering the importance of combining antiretrovirals for their optimal use in treating HIV, a number of drug-drug interactions with etravirine and other antiretrovirals have been evaluated. E...

The HIV replicative cycle reveals several virus-specific events that could function as targets for chemotherapeutic intervention. The compounds that are presently available as anti-HIV drugs are targeted at either the substrate binding site of the reverse transcriptase (zidovudine, didanosine, zalcitabine, stavudine, lamivudine) or a non-substrate binding site of the reverse transcriptase (nevi...