Targeting protein-protein interactions: a promising avenue of anti-HIV drug discovery.

In recent years, the number of useful chemical biology information of protein-protein interactions in the HIV life cycle and related inhibitors, is growing rapidly, which makes protein-protein interactions a new investigative area for antiviral drug intervention. This review will summarize recent work in this field, mainly focusing on the utilization of small molecules targeted against a variety of protein-protein interactions that have great therapeutic feasibility for HIV infection, and lastly outline some other important protein-protein interactions with a potential to advance into novel anti-HIV drug targets in future.