Peptides as Therapeutic Agents for Dengue Virus

Chew, Miaw-Fang; Poh, Keat-Seong; Poh, Chit-Laa

Many peptides are shown to be effective as they demonstrated good in silico and in vitro binding affinity against viral targets (Table 1 and 2). However, many of these antiviral peptides against DENV have not been tested in cell-based assays and none of them has been evaluated in any in vivo study. Therefore, further studies should focus on elucidating the antiviral potential of these peptides in animal models, such as the AG129 mice which are highly susceptible to DENV infection as they lack both type I and type II IFN receptors [196] [197] [198] . Furthermore, an ideal DENV inhibitor will need to be effective against all four DENV serotypes. The inhibitory potential against all DENV serotypes have not been explored by many of the studies described in this review. With just a few exceptions, the mechanisms of inhibition of most of the peptides are not well defined. These are the areas where further studies should be performed to exploit the potential of these antiviral peptide candidates. Moreover, the commercially available vaccine (CYD-TDV) is unable to achieve the maximal protection against all four DENV serotypes, while the vector control strategy has failed to reduce the spread of DENV. Peptide inhibitors targeting host cells, viral structural proteins or non-structural proteins may help to overcome dengue infection. With effective antivirals, vaccination and vector controls such as fogging, dengue in endemic countries can be better controlled and the state of public health can be improved. Hexapeptide-2 DENV-2 AIKKFS Glide energy -80.4kcal/mol NS2B-NS3 [174] Retro tripeptide hybrid 11 DENV-2 R-Arg-Lys-Nle-NH2 with an arylcyano-acrylamide group as N-terminal cap