- The interaction of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV-1) transactivator protein Tat with its RNA response element TAR is an essential step in viral replication and therefore an attractive target to develop antivirals with new mechanism of action. I am interested in the design of compounds that inhibit HIV replication by interfering with this interaction. I am exploring two paths of inhibitor design. The first is structure-based design of conformationally constrained cyclic peptide mimics of the Tat protein. The second is a fragment-based building block approach toward small molecule drug design, an avenue which has proven successful with proteins but has not yet been tried against an RNA target.
People/Amy Davidson (last edited 2009-02-13 20:21:19 by awillia4)