Identification and Analysis of Antiviral Compounds Against Poliovirus

The Global Polio Eradication Initiative, launched in 1988, had as its goal the eradication of polio worldwide by the year 2000 through large-scale vaccinations campaigns with the live attenuated oral PV vaccine (OPV) (Griffiths et al., Biologicals 34:73-74, 2006). Despite substantial progress, polio remains endemic in several countries and new imported cases are reported on a regular basis ( http://www.polioeradication.org/casecount.asp ).It was recognized by the poliovirus research community that developing antivirals against poliovirus would be invaluable in the post-OPV era. Here, we describe three methods essential for the identification of selective inhibitors of poliovirus replication and for determining their mode of action by time-of-drug-addition studies as well as by the isolation of compound-resistant poliovirus variants.