Strategies for designing influenza neuraminidase inhibitors and research progress / 国际药学研究杂志

Nowadays, influenza is still a big threat to human health and could cause mass mortality during pandemic years. The viral surface protein, neuraminidase (NA), plays an important role in the life cycle of influenza virus and has been proved as the major antiinfluenza target. Since the X-ray crystal structure of NA was defined in 1983, the application of structure-based drug design and computational chemistry have greatly contributed to the development of NA inhibitors (NAIs). Till now, two antiinfluenza drugs zanamivir (Relenza) and oseltamivir (Tamiflu) are available. In this article, we will illustrate the strategies of NAIs' design according to the development of the two drugs and also present some recent progress in this field.