# Design & Synthesis of Nonpeptide Protease Inhibitors

> **NIH NIH R01** · PURDUE UNIVERSITY · 2024 · $580,003

## Abstract

The combined active antiretroviral therapy (cART) is critically important for improved HIV
management and patient care of HIV-infected individuals. Protease inhibitors (PIs) are important
components of cART regimens. The 2020 UNAIDS reports that 38 million people are living with
HIV/AIDS in 2019 and over 25 million people were accessing antiretroviral therapy. The cART
treatment regimen resulted in a significant reduction of HIV/AIDS-related mortality and greatly
improved life expectancies of those patients with access to cART. There is no cure for HIV/AIDS
and long-term treatment has posed a serious challenge because of the emergence of multidrug-
resistant HIV-1 variants. About 40-50% of those patients who initially achieved favorable viral
suppression to undetectable levels experienced treatment failure. These drug-resistant HIV
strains can be transmitted, raising further uncertainty with respect to future treatment options.
Also, neurocognitive dysfunction, known as HIV-associated neurocognitive disorder (HAND) has
become a major concern. Furthermore, PIs are faced with traditional serious limitations including,
major toxicity, tolerance, and necessary adherence to complex medical regimens. The
development of a new generation of PIs effective against drug-resistant HIV with longer duration
of action, and improved CNS penetration properties for treatment and possible prevention of
devastating HAND, is vital to the future management of HIV/AIDS.
 Our highly collaborative research efforts led to the development of darunavir as an approved
drug for treatment against drug-resistant HIV and it has emerged as a front line therapy against
HIV/AIDS. However, current treatment modalities are far from ideal as an effective long-term
treatment option. Based upon X-ray crystal structures of complexes of darunavir or other PIs with
HIV-1 protease, we designed and developed diverse classes of potent PIs with marked antiviral
activity, and excellent drug-resistance profiles against multidrug-resistant HIV-1 strains. We have
also developed tools and important ‘backbone binding’ design concepts to combat drug-
resistance. Several recent inhibitors, have consistently shown marked improvement of potency
compared to darunavir against a panel of multidrug-resistant HIV-1 variants. These PIs also
exhibited much improvement of dimerization inhibitory properties of HIV-1 protease. One of these
PIs have potently inhibited integrase function. In our current proposed studies we plan to focus
on optimization of the next generation of PIs for clinical development. Our multidisciplinary
research efforts integrate structure-based design, synthesis, protein-ligand X-ray crystallography,
inhibition kinetics, in-depth virus and cell-biology and pharmacological studies.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10846680
- **Project number:** 5R01AI150466-28
- **Recipient organization:** PURDUE UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** ARUN K GHOSH
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $580,003
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 1995-09-01 → 2027-04-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10846680

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10846680, Design & Synthesis of Nonpeptide Protease Inhibitors (5R01AI150466-28). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-26 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10846680. Licensed CC0.

---

*[NIH grants dataset](/datasets/nih-grants) · CC0 1.0*