Tuesday, 2 September 2008

How Evolutionary Biology Can Help Design Novel Anti-Viral Drugs

While the concept of evolutionary medicine has been around for well over fifty years, the collaboration between evolutionary biology and medical research has proven less profitable than was predicted by early proponents of the field. However, recent efforts to fight rapidly evolving infectious viral pathogens have been increasingly relying on the underlying understanding of viral evolution in order to design more effective antiviral drugs. Esteban Domingo and his colleagues in a recent perspective for Expert Opinion on Biological Therapy entitled "Future prospects for the treatment of rapidly evolving viral pathogens: insights from evolutionary biology" review the promise of drug design informed by evolutionary biology for overcoming viral escape mutations.


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