TY - CHAP M1 - Book, Section TI - Antiviral Therapy A1 - Schleiss, Mark R. A2 - Kline, Mark W. PY - 2018 T2 - Rudolph's Pediatrics, 23e AB - The deployment of antiviral therapy typically requires the clinician to strike a delicate balance between targeting virally encoded functions required for production of progeny viruses and avoiding toxicity to the host cellular functions subverted by the viral replication machinery. Accordingly, as a part of the trade-off for eliciting antiviral effect, many antivirals historically have induced considerable toxicity in the host cell as well. A watershed moment in the history of antiviral drug discovery was the development of the drug acyclovir, one of a series of drugs that was developed that blocked nucleic acid synthesis only in virally infected cells without damaging the uninfected host cells (because a viral enzyme, thymidine kinase, is required to phosphorylate the compound to its active form). This discovery resulted in the awarding of a Nobel Prize to Dr. Gertrude Elion in 1988. SN - PB - McGraw-Hill Education CY - New York, NY Y2 - 2024/03/29 UR - accesspediatrics.mhmedical.com/content.aspx?aid=1182934995 ER -