Re:Any chance this could lead to tougher virii? (Score 2)

Far be it from me to be the voice of doom and gloom, but I'd be very surprised if a drug like can have a significant long term impact on viruses such as the common cold. I used to work on the structures of picornaviruses, and reading a bit between the lines, I think the drug that the CNN article talks about probably works the same way as many other drugs which have been tried in the past. The only difference appears to be that someone has "designed" this one, rather than stumbled upon it with the "shotgun" approach.

The major problem with all drugs which target the picornaviruses is the high mutation rate of the virus. As the other reply to this message points out, it's not a question of whether a virus will learn how to avoid a particular drug, but when. Mutations will happen and the viruses which come into contact with the drug will. Just like bacteria become resistant to drugs, viruses will too. It won't take long before subtle changes to the virus structures will render any drug useless, especially if it's thrown about with gay abandon, like antibiotics have been.

Another doubt that I have surrounds the blanket statement that the drug will be effective against the "common cold": the last time I checked there were 102 distinctly different viruses which fitted that bill, and they were divided into two groups. Antibodies - the sharp end of the immune systems response to a viral infection - which recognise members of one group won't have any impact on members of the other group. Yet we're to believe that a single, simple drug molecule is going to knock out every type of common cold virus, plus polio, plus enteroviruses, plus a handful of other viruses ?

Maybe I'm just a sceptic, but I find it hard to see how this drug can live up the hype which will undoubtedly surround it.