Potential for antiviral treatment of severe acute respiratory syndrome

Severe acute respiratory syndrome is a new, sometimes lethal disease of humans that is caused by a novel coronavirus. To date there have been over 750 related deaths and there is clearly an urgent need to develop specific antiviral drugs to combat this disease. In this review, the authors shall focus on the molecular biology of the coronavirus and suggest how this information can be used to identify possible targets for antiviral drugs.

Within a remarkably short period of time, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus has been isolated, its genome has been sequenced and the structure of at least one key viral enzyme has been deduced. In addition, bioinformatic analysis has predicted a number of enzymatic activities associated with proteins of the viral replicase-transcriptase complex. In some cases, these functions have been confirmed by biochemical analysis. Thus, there has been significant progress in the rational approach to anti-severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus drug design. This approach, combined with the random screening of licensed compounds or existing compound libraries, should result in the identification of novel lead compounds and the expeditious development of antiviral drugs.

Although the initial severe acute respiratory syndrome epidemic has been controlled by conventional measures, the animal reservoir for the coronavirus progenitor has not been identified. It is therefore likely that the virus will be reintroduced into the human population in the future. When this happens, the most economical and effective way to contain the virus will be the therapeutic use of antiviral drugs.