Few
Zika virus (
ZIKV)
outbreaks had been reported since its first
detection in 1947, until the recent
epidemics occurred in
South America (2014/2015) and expeditiously became a global
public health emergency. This
arbovirus reached 0.5-1.3 million cases of
ZIKV infection in
Brazil in 2015 and rapidly spread in new geographic areas such as the
Americas. Despite the mild symptoms of the
Zika fever, the major concern is related to the related severe
neurological disorders, especially
microcephaly in
newborns. Advances in
ZIKV drug discovery have been made recently and constitute promising approaches to
ZIKV treatment. In this
review, we summarize current computational
drug discovery efforts and their applicability to discovery of anti-
ZIKV drugs. Lastly, we present successful examples of the use of computational approaches to
ZIKV drug discovery.