Antiviral agent

Abstract

An object of the present invention is to provide a viral disease control agent which has a mechanism of action different from conventional one as a substitute for existing viral disease control methods and is used in more practical and safer manners. The present invention utilizes a compound having inhibitory activity on the binding of a substance α to a PTGS suppressor protein, wherein the substance α has a property of inducing PTGS and a property of binding to the PTGS suppressor protein and shows a decrease in the property of inducing PTGS upon binding to the PTGS suppressor protein.

Description

TECHNICAL FIELD[0001]The present invention relates to a PTGS suppressor protein binding inhibitor and an antiviral agent having a novel mechanism of action.BACKGROUND ART[0002]A very large number of pathogenic viruses have spread on earth, and their infection has caused suffering or economic losses in various organisms such as animals including humans and useful plants (e.g., crops). Examples of viral diseases caused by a pathogenic virus infection include rice dwarf disease caused by rice dwarf virus infection, tomato mosaic disease caused by tobacco mosaic virus infection, human influenza caused by influenza virus infection, human hepatitis B caused by hepatitis B virus infection, and acquired immune deficiency syndrome caused by human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection.[0003]Host organisms such as plants or animals, when infected with pathogenic viruses, develop various biological defense mechanisms against the infection to inhibit the growth of the viruses or to relieve the ...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0018]It has been demanded to provide a control method which has a mechanism of action different from conventional one as a substitute for the existing viral disease control methods described abov

Problems solved by technology

A very large number of pathogenic viruses have spread on earth, and their infection has caused suffering or economic losses in various organisms such as animals including humans and useful plants (e.g., crops).

However, these therapeutic agents for influenza or acquired immune deficiency syndrome are also known to have side effects, and it is believed that drug resistance viruses will inevitably appear due to the variability of the viruses.

Furthermore, agents against viruses, except for some agents structurally similar to nucleic acids, are only applicable to a target viral disease.

Moreover, vaccination, albeit effective, must be performed before infection and has problems such as time taken to develop antibodies or the easily variable antigenic site of viruses.

Furthermore, the therapeutic agents or vaccines are only applicable to a target viral disease.

However, the breeding of resistant varieties requires a long period, and resistant strains of viruses inevitably appear.

The raising of virus-free plants by stem tip culture or the like is not perfect.

However, attenuated viruses are difficult to stably prepare and are effective only for viruses of the same species or related species.

Plant defense activators have unstable effects.

Spraying large amounts of insecticide that preventively controls insect vectors for viruses may lead to environmental pollution and cannot be expected to have therapeutic effects on virus-infected plants.

Therefore, it is highly possible that the cost of developing the antiviral agents for viral diseases in plants cannot be recovered even if they are developed at cost much lower than the cost of developing the antiviral agents for viral diseases in humans, for example, anti-HIV drugs or anti-influenza drugs.

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