[Molecular mehanisms of drug resistance acquisition in HIV]

The advent of highly active antiretroviral therapy has greatly improved the prognosis of HIV-1 infection, but eradication of the virus has not been achieved. The emergence of antiretroviral-resistant viruses is one of the most important factors affecting the prognosis of HIV-1 infected patients today. In this manuscript, recent progresses in drug resistance HIV researches are reviewed. As for the acquisition of nucleoside analogue RT inhibitor resistance, excision mechanism is more clear by enzymological and structural view points. Recently developed integrase inhibitor, the whole new target of antiretroviral, induces drug resistance mutations in the active sites of integrase. The first drug that targets the host factors, chemokine receptor CCR5, demonstrates different resistance profiles from the present antiretrovirals. These new findings are important to develop successful treatments that will not fail due to drug resistance acquisition.