In silico approaches to Zika virus drug discovery.

INTRODUCTION: After the WHO declared Zika virus (ZIKV) as a public health emergency of international concern, intense research for the development of vaccines and drugs has been undertaken, leading to the development of several candidates. Areas covered: This review discusses the developments achieved so far by computational methods in the discovery of candidate compounds targeting ZIKV proteins, i.e. the envelope and capsid structural proteins, the NS3 helicase/protease, and the NS5 methyltransferase/RNA-dependent RNA polymerase. Expert opinion: Research for effective drugs against ZIKV is still in a very early discovery phase. Notwithstanding the intense efforts for the development of new drugs and the identification of several promising candidates by using different approaches, including computational methods, so far only a few candidates have been experimentally tested. An important caveat of anti-flavivirus drug development is represented by the difficult of reproducing the in vivo microenvironment of the replication complex, which may lead to discrepancies between in vitro results and experimental evaluation in vivo. Moreover, anti-ZIKV drugs have the additional requirement of an excellent safety profile in pregnancy and ability to diffuse to different tissues, including the central nervous system, the testis, and the placenta.