Rational Drug Design of DNA Oligonucleotides as HIV Inhibitors

DNA oligonucleotides as anti-HIV therapeutic agents have been developed for more than a decade. Numbers of oligonucleotides have been designed as potential anti-HIV inhibitors. Here we summarized the designed anti-viral oligonucletides in last decade and divided the designed DNA HIV inhibitors into three categories: (i) antisense inhibitors, (ii) triplex inhibitors and (iii) G-quartet inhibitors, based upon their inhibitory mechanism and structures. Also we proposed a strategy of rational drug design of anti-HIV oligonucleotides, which includes several critical steps, such as (1) structure-based rational drug design, (2) chemical synthesis / combinational chemistry, (3) the determination of structural properties, (4) assays of the inhibition of HIV-1 IN and virus replication, and (5) 3D QSAR operation. This methodology has been used by the design of G-quartet inhibitors.