National Cancer Institute, Warner-Lambert other research news

Researchers at Warner-Lambert and the NCI reported success in using disulfide-substituted benzamides, discovered through the NCI's drug screening program, in inhibiting HIV nucleocapsid protein zinc fingers in vitro.

Zinc fingers are a highly conserved structural motif in retroviruses. In HIV, they play a role in the packaging of viral genomic RNA into progeny virions, as well as a function in an early phase of retroviral infection. Because zinc fingers are mutationally intolerant and are required both for acute infection and virion assembly, they are prime antiviral targets, the authors wrote in Science. ...