Fighting the flu: a brief review on anti-influenza agents

ABSTRACT

The influenza virus causes one of the most prevalent and lethal infectious viral diseases of the respiratory system; the disease progression varies from acute self-limiting mild fever to disease chronicity and death. Although both the preventive and treatment measures have been vital in protecting humans against seasonal epidemics or sporadic pandemics, there are several challenges to curb the influenza virus such as limited or poor cross-protection against circulating virus strains, moderate protection in immune-compromised patients, and rapid emergence of resistance. Currently, there are four US-FDA-approved anti-influenza drugs to treat flu infection, viz. Rapivab, Relenza, Tamiflu, and Xofluza. These drugs are classified based on their mode of action against the viral replication cycle with the first three being Neuraminidase inhibitors, and the fourth one targeting the viral polymerase. The emergence of the drug-resistant strains of influenza, however, underscores the need for continuous innovation towards development and discovery of new anti-influenza agents with enhanced antiviral effects, greater safety, and improved tolerability. Here in this review, we highlighted commercially available antiviral agents besides those that are at different stages of development including under clinical trials, with a brief account of their antiviral mechanisms.

KEYWORDS:

• Influenza virus
• anti-influenza agents
• viral replication
• phytochemicals

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Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.

Notes on contributors

Sambuddha Chakraborty

Sambuddha Chakraborty A research scholar at the infectious disease lab, Department of Microbiology, Central University of Tripura, India. He completed hisMaster’s in Virology from the National Institute of Virology, India. H worked as a virologist with the Serum Institute of India for three years and worked on several classical and recombinant vaccines including Rota, Influenza, Dengue, Rabies. He was associated with the animal and cell culture-based safety and efficacy testing of the oxford-AstraZeneca-SIIL COVID-19 vaccine.

Ashwini Chauhan

Ashwini Chauhan, PhD, has have more than 20years of research experience in the field of medical microbiology with specialization in chronic infections. He has published his research work in reputed journals like Nature Biotechnology, Lancet Infectious Diseases, and Trends in Biotechnology to name few. He got his research training from premier institutes like University of Texas and Institute Pasteur, Paris, and Sanofipasteur, Lyon. His lab research is focused on bacterial biofilms, biofilm infections following viral infections. They try to understand the various aspects involved in bacterial infections to develop novel antibacterial therapeutics such as viral infections that are normally followed by opportunistic bacterial infections.