1. History of antiviral drugs approved between January 1959 and April 2016.
History of antiviral drugs approved between January 1959 and April (A) Approved antiviral drugs visualized in the zodiac. The gray arrow shows the dates of approval of antiviral drugs from January 1959 to April Twelve signs are positioned in a circle. Each sign indicates a drug group whose name is annotated outside the circle. In the drug group, each red star within a sign represents an approved drug, placed according to the year of approval. Yellow stars indicate approved drugs that have been discontinued or abandoned for clinical use. A total of 90 stars thus represent all approved antiviral drugs, and each drug star is positioned according to its approval date (Table 2). In this picture, every approved drug could be conceived as a “superstar,” and its contribution to human health is worthy of being remembered and respected. Therefore, this zodiac-based figure metaphorically recognizes each antiviral drug as a star in the universe, commemorating the significant contributions of antiviral drug discovery and development over the past 50 years. A list of drug abbreviations is available in Table 2. Movies and label information for approved drugs are accessible online (see (B) Timeline of approval of drugs against 9 human infectious diseases (HIV, HBV, HCV, HSV, HCMV, HPV, RSV, VZV, and influenza virus). The x axis indicates the period from January 1959 to April 2016, and the y axis shows the total number of approved drugs. For each virus, a colored line demonstrates the total number of approved drugs. Moreover, years of discovery of HBV (1963), HPV (1965), HIV (1983), and HCV (1989) are indicated, while the other five viruses were discovered before 1959 (Table 1).
Erik De Clercq, and Guangdi Li Clin. Microbiol. Rev. 2016; doi: /CMR