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Published on: May 15, 2014
The design and development of drugs acting against the smallpox virus
Kamel El Omari1, David K Stammers
1University of Oxford, Division of Structural Biology, The Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, Oxford, OX3 7BN, UK +44 01865 287542 ; +44 01865 287547 ; kamel@strubi.ox.ac.uk.
Abstract:
The eradication of smallpox was announced by the WHO in 1980. However, smallpox has not totally disappeared from people's minds because of its potential use as a biological weapon. Further outbreaks of smallpox would, needless to say, be devastating in a population, which has little or no immune defence against the virus. The real concerns come from the fact that the previously used vaccine would not be tolerated today by a number of patients and, more worryingly, there are no approved antiviral drugs against smallpox. This review is focused on the antiviral research, which has been stimulated to deliver potent inhibitors of the replication of the causative agent of smallpox, variola virus.
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