Current Drug Design Strategies for Fighting Against Swine Influenza

Background: Swine influenza is a seasonal health threat due to global outbreak of H1N1 pandemic in 2009 leading to death of millions of people because of antigenic drift of the dangerous influenza A viral strains. Scarcity of specific chemotherapeutics emphasizes the priority of drug design and discovery of new anti-influenza leads having less toxicity and resistant to the dynamic viral strains. Objective: The present review is an update in the current trends in drug design from the stand point of ligand and structure based screening of potent swine influenza inhibitors. Method: In quest of different drug targets, ligand and structure based chemometric screening tools are the major platform for the design of potent chemotherapeutics having greater affinity towards various targets including polymerase basic protein 1 (PB1), PB1-F2, PB2, polymerase acidic protein (PA), surface glycoproteins hemagglutinin and neuraminidase, nucleocapsid protein (NP), nuclear matrix proteins including M1, Ion pore protein - M2 as well as two nonstructural proteins NS1 and NS2, respectively. Results: Ligand based screening deals with QSAR and pharmacophore modeling whereas structure based virtual screening deal with crystallography and molecular docking. Conclusion: The study in this direction can increase the search of hit rates and decrease in cost of drug design and development prior to experiment by producing potent chemotherapeutics against swine influenza.