Antiviral properties of deazaadenine nucleoside derivatives

Viral infections have menaced human beings since time immemorial, and even today new viral strains that cause lethal diseases are being discovered with alarming frequency. One major example is HIV, the etiological agent of AIDS, which spread up in the last two decades. Very recently, other virus based diseases such as avian flu have spread fear around the world, and hemorrhagic fevers from central Africa serious threaten human health because of their very deadly effects. New antiviral agents are still greatly needed to counter these menaces. Many scientists are involved in this field of research, and many of the recently discovered effective antiviral compounds are nucleoside analogues. Among those derivatives, deazapurine nucleoside analogues have demonstrated potent inhibitory effect of viral replication. This review reports on recently generated data from preparing and testing deazapurine nucleoside derivatives as inhibitors in virus replication systems. Although most of the reported data have been produced in antiHIV, antiHCMV, and antiHSV biological testing, very recently other new important fields of application have been discovered, all in topical subjects of strong interest. In fact, deazapurine nucleosides have been found to be active as chemotherapeutics for some veterinary systemic viral infections, for which no antiviral drugs are licensed yet. Furthermore, they demonstrated efficacy in the inhibition of Hepatitis C virus replication. Finally, these compounds showed high potency as virucides against Ebola Virus, curing Ebola infected mice with a single dose administration.