What is a maturation inhibitor?

maturation is one of the final steps of the HIV life cycle and includes the processing of viral proteins required by HIV to become infectious. HIV maturation inhibitors are a potentially promising new class of molecules that are studied for their ability to prevent the processing of these proteins. Scientists expect the use of a maturation inhibitor to show effective when preventing HIV from infecting other cells in the body.

In the simplified version of the HIV life cycle, HIV first binds and fuses with the membrane of the target host cell to insert the contents of the virus into the cell. The HIV genome is then reverse transcribed, which refers to the conversion of ribonucleic acid (RNA) to deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and viral DNA is integrated into the host cell genome. At this point, the virus may lie asleep for some time, or it can immediately start producing viral products, such as the new viral RNA and proteins, which will be necessary for the subsequent gathering and release of the infectious virion.

A fundamental step during the HIV maturation process involves gag protein processing. GAG is actually polyprotein, which means that it is originally produced as a long fiber of various proteins that will later be cut into functional pieces. GAG protein must be cut into smaller pieces of HIV protease to form structural proteins that are essential for building an infectious HIV virion. The maturation inhibitor works by disturbing the processing of gags by binding to polyprotein GAG and preventing HIV protease from cutting, resulting in a particle of the virus unable to infect other host cells.

The development of the new HIV class inhibitors is important because HIV therapy often includes a number of medicines from different classes that are together to draw as many of the HIV life cycle as possible. In addition, it is well known that HIV is able to mutate during the drug exposure, resulting in a drug resistance and creating HIV tribes resistant to whole drug classes. FROMTherefore, the new medicine, such as an inhibitor of maturation, is a new class of inhibitor, from which an effective treatment regimen can be determined for people who have exhausted all their drug capabilities. Bevirimat, the inhibitor of maturation, which was first isolated from the Chinese herb, has shown promising results in clinical trials.