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Updated: Jun 27, 2026

Assays for the Identification of Novel Antivirals against Bluetongue Virus
Published on: October 11, 2013
Promising Natural Compounds against Flavivirus Proteases: Citrus Flavonoids Hesperetin and Hesperidin
Raphael J Eberle1,2, Danilo S Olivier3, Marcos S Amaral4
1Institute of Biological Information Processing (IBI-7: Structural Biochemistry), Forschungszentrum Jülich, 52428 Jülich, Germany.
Abstract:
Ubiquitous in citrus plants, Hesperidin and Hesperetin flavanones possess several biological functions, including antiviral activity. Arbovirus infections pose an ever-increasing threat to global healthcare systems. Among the severe arboviral infections currently known are those caused by members of the Flavivirus genus, for example, Dengue Virus-DENV, Yellow Fever Virus-YFV, and West Nile Virus-WNV. In this study, we characterize the inhibitory effect of Hesperidin and Hesperetin against DENV2, YFV, and WNV NS2B/NS3 proteases. We report the noncompetitive inhibition of the NS2B/NS3pro by the two bioflavonoids with half maximal inhibitory concentration (IC50) values <5 µM for HST and <70 µM for HSD. The determined dissociation constants (KD) of both flavonoids is significantly below the threshold value of 30 µM. Our findings demonstrate that a new generation of anti-flavivirus drugs could be developed based on selective optimization of both molecules.
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