1. Rational Drug Design

2. Last time General drug design How to shut down a particular enzyme
Antibacterials- penicillin

3. THIS TIME: aNTIVIRALS How is this related to cancer?
Some viruses cause cancer!
Why are viruses harder to treat than bacteria?
Virus mutate much more often

4. Mutation- treatment challenge?
Remember how we found the structure of the protein before designing a drug for it?
If the protein keeps changing the drug might not be effective.
Must target proteins that are “conserved”- don’t mutate

5. Viruses
Noncellular
DNA covered in a “membrane”- mostly proteins that keep changing and lipids
There are a couple proteins that don’t change- the H and N

6. ‘H’ protein is needed for the virus to enter the host cell
‘N’ protein is needed to cut the virus away from the host cell

7. haemagglutinin (H) and neuraminidase (N) proteins
Sequence is largely conserved during evolution because the proteins are so important
Good targets for drug design
Drug Zanamavir (marketed as Relenza) binds to the neuraminidase protein (N)