A set of experimental drugs fight off influenza in mice as well as a currently available anti-flu drug does. The drug candidates might even work against drug-resistant flu strains, researchers report online February 21 in Science.
Chemist Stephen Withers of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and colleagues designed the drug candidates — members of a class of compounds called 2,3-difluorosialic acids, or DFSAs — to prevent flu virus particles that have entered a cell from moving on to infect other cells.
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