Innovations in Antiviral Development and the Detection of Virus Infections

THE ERA OF ANTIVIRALS Introduction Although there are more than one hundred medically useful antibiotics and fungicides, there are only seven compounds licensed for use as antiviral agents, in the USA. Some of these (acyclovir and ganciclovir) are actually derivatives of each other, making the number of new discoveries even smaller. Moreover, most of these agents are of only limited therapeutic value and have substantial toxicity. It has been more than 100 years ago since Pasteur studied rabies