Antisense Oligonucleotide-Based Therapy for HIV-1 Infection from Laboratory to Clinical Trials

Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV-1), the etiologic agent of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), presents a challenging target for therapeutic intervention. Various events in the replication cycle of HIV-1 have been targeted, therefore, for drug design and discovery. A number of drugs and drug candidates have been designed and studies as inhibitors of virus-specific enzymes, such as reverse transcriptase (DeClerq, 1992) and protease (Debouck, 1992).