Susceptibility of the human retrovirus XMRV to antiretroviral inhibitors

By: Robert A Smith , Geoffrey S Gottlieb and A Dusty Miller

Retrovirology 2010, 7:70doi:10.1186/1742-4690-7-70, Published: 31 August 2010

Results
We extend the findings of previous studies by showing that, in addition to AZT and tenofovir, XMRV and HIV-1 are equally sensitive to AZddA (3'-azido-2',3'-dideoxyadenosine), AZddG (3'-azido-2',3'-dideoxyguanosine) and adefovir.

These results indicate that specific 3'-azido or acyclic nucleoside analog inhibitors of HIV-1 reverse transcriptase (RT) also block XMRV infection with comparable efficacy in vitro. Our data confirm that XMRV is highly resistant to the non-nucleoside RT inhibitors nevirapine and efavirenz and to inhibitors of HIV-1 protease.

In addition, we show that the integrase inhibitors raltegravir and elvitegravir are active against XMRV, with EC50 values in the nanomolar range.