Evaluation of new antiviral agents: I. In vitro perspectives.

A variety of different methods for the evaluation of antiviral agents in cell culture systems are briefly reviewed. It has been repeatedly noted that many test conditions such as the cell culture system, virus strain, virus challenge dose, virus input multiplicity of infection, and time of harvesting, etc., can substantially affect or even alter the test results, thus making comparative studies and unambiguous evaluations very difficult. Attempts are made to discuss previous test methods together with our recent studies with the aim to simplify test procedures and assay methods. Suggestions are proposed for in vitro evaluation of new antiviral agents. It is hoped that this review will alarm investigators to the problems of assaying new antiviral agents. If the suggestions made in this review can be followed, the screening of the enormous number of promising antiviral compounds may be made more efficiently in the near future.