Chemistry of Virus and Antiviral Drug Development of Viral Diseases with Chemical Perspective taking COVID-19 Virus as Special Case

Viruses are mainly composed of proteins and nucleic acids. The constituents or the building blocks of protein are the amino acids, and most of the common amino acid are found in viruses. Now interestingly analysis of viral proteins have shown that viral proteins are not protamines or histones but rather ordinary in composition, in some cases viral proteins have been found to be quite acidic in character. The reactive groups of viruses appear to be essentially the same as those of proteins i. e amino, phenolic, indole, guanidino, sulphhydryl, carboxyl and aliphatic hydroxyl. Usually nucliec acids are regarded as very reactive compounds because of their primary phosphate group, however in viruses they are chemically inert. Enzymes are also found in viruses with other constituent of virus like nucleoprotein, lipids, polysaccharide, copper, biotin and flavin. Mostly viruses consist of three components the genetic material, some protein and a lipid layer. In the case of SARS - Cov - 2 virus responsible for the COVID - 19 disease the genetic material is 30, 000 repeat units RNA whilst others act as spikes to anchor human cell and the lipid layer acts toprotect the whole assembly. The strategies for combating viral diseases are prevention (vaccine) and treatment (antiviral drugs and antibody development). Treatment via antiviral drugs and knowing its chemical perspective would be our main concern in this article. Antiviral drug development be it for HIV AIDS or COVID - 19 virus can be considered a successful stories but currently only 90 drugs have been approved to treat viral infections despite of over 200 human viruses being known and nearly half of this quantity target HIV, and therefore creating shortage of antiviral drug for other known human viruses. Antiviral drug development for various human virus species may prove to be a breakthrough in biochemical sciences.