FUSION INHIBITOR
Fusion inhibitors are a new class of drugs that act against HIV; they got that name because they prevent the virus from fusing with the inside of a cell and so stop it from replicating. Though this term has been used in the pharmaceutical industry since the mid-1990s, it has only very recently started to be seen in the non-specialist press because the first example, Fuzeon (generic name enfuvirtide), was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration only in 2003. Such drugs are members of a broader class, the entry inhibitors, which stop the virus from entering the cell in the first place. These are classed as antiretroviral drugs, like other HIV agents, since HIV is a retrovirus, one that works by generating a DNA copy of its RNA genome inside the cell, the reverse of normal genetic replication, which goes from DNA to RNA.
Affixes. Explaining the building blocks of English. All the key components of the language explained in detail: 1,250 entries plus 10,000 examples.