In Vitro Inhibitory Effects of the Herbal-Marine Compound HESA-A Against Replication of Human Immunodeficiency Virus-1

Background: for more than 2 decades, human immunodeficiency virus (hiv) infection has been known to cause significant morbidity and mortality. difficulties in treating hiv-infected patients include adverse effects and drug resistance and continue to limit the use of conventional anti-retroviral therapies. objectives: to find new anti-retroviral drugs from natural sources, we investigated the inhibitory effects and mechanism of action of hesa-a, a natural biological compound of herbal-marine origin, against hiv-1 replication in vitro. materials and methods: in this study, we used a single-cycle replicable hiv-1 system in which co-transfection of human embryonic kidney (hek)-293t cells with pmznl4-3, pspax2, and pm2g.2 plasmids was performed. cytotoxicity and cytopathic protection assays were performed using the 2,3-bis-(2-methoxy-4-nitro-5-sulfophenyl)-(2h)-tetrazo- lium-5-carboxanilide method. inhibition of p24 antigen production was analyzed, and time-of-drug-addition assay was conducted using quantitative enzyme-linked immuno- sorbent assay (elisa). results: hesa-a inhibited hiv-1-induced cytopathic effect in mt2 and hek293t cells, and the selectivity index values were 13.3 and 8, respectively. we performed quantitative p24 elisa and added varying concentrations of hesa-a in cell culture supernatants at differ- ent times; we observed that hesa-a preserved its ability to inhibit viral replication even at 12 h post-infection. conclusions: these results suggest that hesa-a has potent anti-hiv activity, and its mech- anism of action likely involves interference during the late stages of viral replication, such as virus maturation.