title: Hepatitis C therapy--the future looks bright.
abstract: Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infections affect about 170 million individuals worldwide and can be life-threatening if left untreated. Over the past three decades, ribavirin and interferon-alpha have remained the only available medicines for treating hepatitis C sufferers. Given that this combination therapy is partially effective at best and is associated with severe side-effects, there is an unmet need for new molecular entities which inhibit HCV replication. By employing a combination of structure-based drug design together with high-throughput screening approaches, several pharmaceutical companies have been successful in identifying potentially useful compounds for treating HCV infections. This article provides an overview of some of the small-molecule inhibitors that have shown promise so far in clinical trials and which could reach the clinic within the next three years.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological & Biomedical Sciences, The Aga Khan University Hospital, Stadium Road, Karachi 74800, Pakistan. sohail.qureshi@aku.edu
authors.forename: Sohail A
authors.initials: SA
authors.lastname: Qureshi
authors.forename: Humaira
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Qureshi
authors.forename: Anam
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Hameed
mesh_terms: D000998:Antiviral Agents / Q000494:pharmacology* / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D002986:Clinical Trials as Topic; D055808:Drug Discovery / Q000639:trends*; D006526:Hepatitis C / Q000188:drug therapy* / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000517:prevention & control; D006801:Humans
chemical_list: D000998:Antiviral Agents