Resistance is futile
Finding drug-resistant influenza mutations before nature does
A team of researchers from St. Jude Children's Research Hospital and SRI International hope to beat nature to the punch through a mutagenesis strategy that allows them to identify drug-resistant influenza strains. The idea is to use the strains to design antivirals that can pre-empt the development of resistance, and the team believes the strategy could extend to other settings, including cancer.
In a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the authors designed a system to evolve influenza strains resistant to a tool compound developed by Merck & Co. Inc. (NYSE:MRK) in the 1990s that targets the endonuclease domain of the influenza viral RNA polymerase PA subunit. By inducing mutagenesis, the team found four point mutations that allowed viruses to resist the endonuclease inhibitor without compromising fitness...