Antiviral computer-aided drug design

More than 170 million people worldwide are currently chronically infected with the Hepatitis C virus. Similarly Dengue fever infects 50 million per year in central Africa. It is the same story for so many other viruses that are members of the flaviviridae family. Disproportionally to the severity of an infection with almost all members of Flaviviridae no specific antiviral therapy is available today. There are drugs neither for the treatment nor for the prevention upon infection. Scientists have isolated various proteins and extensively study some of them in an attempt to get information that will eventually be combined to a strategy against the viruses. Herein an effort is made to describe the current status of antiviral research within flaviviridae homology modelling and structure based drug design techniques that may soon lead to new generation of stratagems against flaviviridae. Finally insights into novel technologies in drug design technology are provided.