Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is an important and serious world-wide cause of mortality. Many treatments have been approved for the hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection including IFN-a, immuno-modulatory agents and nucleos(t)ide analogues. However side effects limit their efficacy and also the induction of viral mutations and resistance render them less effective. Therefore it is necessary to develop new antiviral drugs with fewer side effects, higher efficacy and with different modes of action that can be used to cope with the HBV infection. In silico drug designing have paved the way towards the efficient discovery and development of new drugs on the basis of drug target evaluation and analysis. This article presents the overview of currently used antiviral agents and drugs against hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection and their effectiveness.
Modern drug discovery is characterized by the production of vast quantities of compounds and the need to examine these huge libraries in short periods of time. The need to store, manage and analyze these rapidly increasing resources has given rise to the field known as computer-aided drug design (CADD). CADD represents computational methods and resources that are used to facilitate the design and discovery of new therapeutic solutions.
Digital repositories, containing detailed information on drugs and other useful compounds, are goldmines for the study of chemical reactions capabilities. Design libraries, with the potential to generate molecular variants in their entirety, allow the selection and sampling of chemical compounds with diverse characteristics. Fold recognition, for studying sequence-structure homology between protein sequences and structures, are helpful for inferring binding sites and molecular functions. Virtual screening, the in silico analog of high-throughput screening, offers great promise for systematic evaluation of huge chemical libraries to identify potential lead candidates that can be synthesized and tested.
It is clear that for efficient treatment of hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection, the discovery of new antiviral drugs and new strategies for stimulating the immune response against hepatitis B virus (HBV) is necessary. One of the major problems with currently existing treatments is the emergence of drug resistant mutants over time. Therefore novel therapies targeting unique molecules and requiring shorter time of treatment are in need.
The greatest task of HBV treatment in the future is the achievement of safe, efficient, cost-effective and durable regimen, taking advantage of novel therapeutic approaches. This task can be achieved by the introduction of in silico approaches like Computer Aided Drug Design (CADD) in the drug discovery domain. By the use of CADD target specificity with greater accuracy and probability can be achieved positively. In silico approaches use computational methods for identifying and getting the lead compound and after that it can be synthesized and taken through clinical trials. Therefore, using in silico techniques, for the discovery and development of anti-hepatitis B drugs, will serve best for the efficient treatment against this perilous infection.
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