title: The case for transmissible antivirals to control population-wide infectious disease.
abstract: Infectious disease control faces significant challenges including: how to therapeutically target the highest-risk populations, circumvent behavioral barriers, and overcome pathogen persistence and resistance mechanisms. We review a recently proposed solution to overcome these challenges: antivirals that transmit by 'piggybacking' on viral replication. These proposed antivirals, termed 'therapeutic interfering particles' (TIPs), are engineered molecular parasites of viruses that are designed to steal replication resources from the wild type virus. Depriving viruses of crucial replication machinery, TIPs would reduce viral loads. As obligate parasites, TIPs would transmit via the same risk factors and transmission routes as wild type viruses, automatically reaching high-risk populations, and thereby substantially limiting viral transmission even in resource-poor settings. Design issues and ethical/safety considerations of this proposed intervention are discussed.
authors.affiliation: Gladstone Institutes, Virology and Immunology, 1650 Owens Street, San Francisco, CA 94158, USA; Joint Graduate Group in Bioengineering, University of California Berkeley, and University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA.
authors.forename: Timothy
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Notton
authors.affiliation: Gladstone Institutes, Virology and Immunology, 1650 Owens Street, San Francisco, CA 94158, USA.
authors.forename: Josep
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Sardanyés
authors.affiliation: Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard University, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
authors.forename: Ariel D
authors.initials: AD
authors.lastname: Weinberger
authors.affiliation: Gladstone Institutes, Virology and Immunology, 1650 Owens Street, San Francisco, CA 94158, USA; Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA. Electronic address: leor.weinberger@gladstone.ucsf.edu.
authors.forename: Leor S
authors.initials: LS
authors.lastname: Weinberger
mesh_terms: D000998:Antiviral Agents; D057005:Bioengineering / Q000379:methods*; D003140:Communicable Disease Control / Q000379:methods*; D003141:Communicable Diseases / Q000188:drug therapy / Q000628:therapy* / Q000635:transmission / Q000821:virology; D006801:Humans; D011051:Poliomyelitis; D018570:Risk Assessment; D014777:Virus Diseases / Q000517:prevention & control* / Q000635:transmission / Q000821:virology
chemical_list: D000998:Antiviral Agents