ABSTRACT
Currently, there are six classes of drugs acting at various stages of the HIV life cycle: (i) nucleos(t)ide reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NRTIs), (ii) non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NNRTIs), (iii) protease inhibitors (PIs), (iv) CCR5 co-receptor antagonists, (v) fusion inhibitors, and (vi) integrase strand transfer inhibitors (Fig. 1.1). Protection against HIV transmission requires the use of highly potent ARVs with high solubility. NRTIs and NNRTIs are of greatest interest because of their pre-integration activity, long half-lives, safety profiles, and seemingly remarkable success in preventing infection in animal models [8,9,21-23]. HIV evolves in host cells that provide the essential microenvironment required for its life cycle. Genome-wide small interfering RNA (siRNA)-mediated single gene knockdown studies have provided elegant evidence that HIV exploits several host proteins, also
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