Our current research in HIV replication is focused in the discovery of new antiviral drugs acting on targets unexploited in current therapies (i.e. ribonuclease H), and understanding reverse transcriptase (RT) function and activity to improve its biotechnological potential.

In collaboration with Chinese researchers we have recently described novel double-winged galloyl derivatives and a series of coumarin-based compounds as potent HIV-1 RNase H inhibitors (IC50 values around 65 nM and 4 µM, respectively). Selected coumarin derivatives were characterized as dual inhibitors of HIV-1 DNA polymerase and RNase H activities, and showed antiviral efficiency in cell culture (EC50 ~ 5.6 µM). Recently, we demonstrated that mutational inactivation of the RT’s RNase H eliminates its strand transfer efficiency while diminishing RNA-dependent strand displacement activity. Interestingly, the residual activity can be completely eliminated by adding coumarin derivatives and this property could be used in biotechnological applications to obtain more uniform read coverages when copying long RNAs, particularly when using several primers.