title: The antiviral protein cyanovirin-N: the current state of its production and applications.
abstract: Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)/AIDS continues to spread worldwide, and most of the HIV-infected people living in developing countries have little or no access to highly active antiretroviral therapy. The development of efficient and low-cost microbicides to prevent sexual transmission of HIV should be given high priority because there is no vaccine available yet. Cyanovirin-N (CVN) is an entry inhibitor of HIV and many other viruses, and it represents a new generation of microbicide that has specific and potent activity, a different mechanism of action, and unusual chemicophysical stability. In vitro and in vivo antiviral tests suggested that the anti-HIV effect of CVN is stronger than a well-known gp120-targeted antibody (2G12) and another microbicide candidate, PRO2000. CVN is a cyanobacteria-derived protein that has special structural features, making the artificial production of this protein very difficult. In order to develop an efficient and relatively low-cost approach for large-scale production of recombinant CVN to satisfy medical use, this protein has been expressed in many systems by trial and error. Here, to summarize the potential and remaining challenges for the development of this protein into an HIV prevention agent, the progress in the structural mechanism determination, heterologous production and pharmacological evaluation of CVN is reviewed.
authors.affiliation: Biomedical R&D Center, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Bioengineering Medicine, National Engineering Research Center of Genetic Medicine, Jinan University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, People's Republic of China. xiongsheng@jnu.edu.cn
authors.forename: Sheng
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Xiong
authors.forename: Jun
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Fan
authors.forename: Kaio
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Kitazato
mesh_terms: D000998:Antiviral Agents / Q000378:metabolism* / Q000494:pharmacology*; D001426:Bacterial Proteins / Q000096:biosynthesis* / Q000494:pharmacology*; D002352:Carrier Proteins / Q000096:biosynthesis* / Q000494:pharmacology*; D000458:Cyanobacteria / Q000378:metabolism*; D006678:HIV / Q000187:drug effects; D006801:Humans; D011994:Recombinant Proteins / Q000096:biosynthesis / Q000494:pharmacology
chemical_list: D000998:Antiviral Agents; D001426:Bacterial Proteins; D002352:Carrier Proteins; D011994:Recombinant Proteins; C107733:cyanovirin N