- Nucleoside analogues
Nucleoside analogues are a range of antiviral products used to prevent
viral replication in infected cells. The most commonly used isAciclovir .Function
They work as
antimetabolite s by being similar enough tonucleosides to be incorporated into growingDNA strands, but different enough ensure that the resultant DNA is non-functional. They also affect normal cell growth, such as bone marrow cells, so there can be significant toxic effects.There is a large family of nucleoside analogue reverse transcriptase inhibitors, because DNA production by
reverse transcriptase is very different from normal humanDNA replication , so it is possible to design nucleoside analogues that are preferentially incorporated by the former.Less selective nucleoside analogues are used as
chemotherapy agents to treatcancer .Examples
Nucleoside analogue drugs include:
*deoxyadenosine analogues
**Didanosine
**Vidarabine (chemotherapy)
*deoxycytidine analogues
**Cytarabine (chemotherapy)
**Emtricitabine
**Lamivudine
**Zalcitabine
*deoxyguanosine analogues
**Abacavir
* (deoxy-)thymidine analogues
**Stavudine
**Zidovudine (Azidothymidine, or AZT)
*deoxyuridine analogues
**Idoxuridine
**Trifluridine Related drugs are
nucleobase analogues such asAciclovir andnucleotide analog ues.ee also
* For Nucleoside analogues in biology see
Nucleic acid analogues
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