Antiviral Research - 15th International Conference. 17-21 March 2002, Prague, Czech Republic.

The 15th International Conference on Antiviral Research, organized by the International Society for Antiviral Research (ISAR), was held in Prague. Around 320 participants attended the meeting. In over 160 presentations, the latest preclinical and early clinical data on the development of new antiviral agents were presented. A satellite symposium entitled 'Clinical update on antiviral drugs' preceded the main meeting program. The conference was jointly chaired by Antonin Holy (Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry, Czech Republic) as the local representative and Earl Kern (University of Alabama at Birmingham, USA) of the ISAR Conference Committee. New agents that target distinct steps of the HIV life cycle were presented. Notably, novel HIV entry inhibitors acting on a post-binding step, a series of N-aminoimidazole derivatives blocking reverse transcriptase or post integrase events, and innovative strategies aimed at avoiding HIV drug resistance to reverse transcriptase (RT) inhibitors were described at the meeting. In this report, oral and poster presentations dealing with anti-HIV and antiretroviral agents in the development pipeline are discussed.