What is the Role of Nucleosides in Drug Development?

[schordinger]

The pathway of biosynthesis of nucleotide is commonly available in most textbook, but it is a bit difficult to find out that of nucleoside...

I know nucleoside can be useful drug, and it also exist in living body, but for what ?? for making nucleotide ?? or it form just by dissociation from nucleotide ??

thx~~~~

 

[iansmith]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucleoside

Nucleosides are glycosylamines made by attaching a nitrogenous base to a ribose ring. Examples of these include cytidine, uridine, adenosine, guanosine, thymidine and inosine.

Nucleosides can be phosphorylated by specific kinases in the cell, producing nucleotides, which are the molecular building blocks of DNA and RNA.

Nucleoside triphosphates are the energy rich end products of the majority of biochemical energy releasing pathways.

Nucleoside use for drugs are analogous to those used by organisims. Therefore, the analogous nucleoside will be incorporate into the genetic material. These are mostly used in HIV treatment. These drugs interfere with the production of reverse transcriptase synthesis. The idea behind using these drugs is that viruses synthesis is faster than that of human and human have better error-repair mechanisms than retroviruses. Side effects exist.

http://www.niaid.nih.gov/daids/dtpdb/nucana.htm