Antiviral agents against flaviviruses

Flaviviruses are one of the most common groups of viruses, which cause pathologies worldwide, targeting mostly poor populations in underdeveloped countries. These include Zika, Dengue, West Nile, Japanese encephalitis, and others. In addition, these share proteins that reflect in their virulence, as their life cycles and mechanism of resistance are related. Thus, different molecular structures are essential for these viruses, involving four structural proteins, being capsid, pre-Membrane, and Envelope; and also, seven nonstructural (NS) proteins, being NS1, NS2A, NS2B, NS3, NS4A, NS4B, and NS5. All of them are involved in the replication, maturation, assembly, and regulation of virus processes into host cells. Despite advances and researchers for increasing the treatment of infections caused by flaviviruses, pharmacotherapy remains insufficient to improve this worrying current scenario. In front of these problems, the present chapter highlights recent progress in the medicinal chemistry field focused on relevant compounds, as antiviral agents. Therefore, molecular modeling, virtual screening, drug repurposing, and biological evaluations are also covered. These techniques and studies have been crucial for the identification of new synthetic and other inhibitors aiming at viruses from Flavivirus genus.