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Journal of Virology, October 2001, p. 9077-9086, Vol. 75, No. 19
0022-538X/01/$04.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/JVI.75.19.9077-9086.2001
Copyright © 2001, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
A Novel Nonnucleoside Inhibitor Specifically Targets
Cytomegalovirus DNA Maturation via the UL89 and UL56 Gene
Products
Iris
Buerger,1
Juergen
Reefschlaeger,1
Wolfgang
Bender,2
Peter
Eckenberg,2
Andreas
Popp,3
Olaf
Weber,1,
Sascha
Graeper,4,
Hans-Dieter
Klenk,5
Helga
Ruebsamen-Waigmann,1 and
Sabine
Hallenberger1,*
Antiinfective Research,
Virology,1 Medicinal
Chemistry,2 and Pharmacological
Pathology,3 Business Group Pharma, Bayer
AG, D-42096 Wuppertal, Institute of Medical Microbiology
and Immunology, University of Bonn, D-53127
Bonn,4 and Institute of Virology,
University of Marburg, D-35037 Marburg,5 Germany
Received 4 April 2001/Accepted 30 June 2001
3-Hydroxy-2,2-dimethyl-N-[4({[5-(dimethylamino)-1-naphthyl]sulfonyl}amino)-phenyl]propanamide
(BAY 38-4766) is a novel selective nonnucleoside inhibitor of
cytomegalovirus (CMV) replication with an excellent safety profile.
This compound and structural analogues inhibit neither viral DNA
synthesis nor viral transcription and translation. Accumulation of
dense bodies and noninfectious enveloped particles coincides with
inhibition of both concatemer processing and functional cleavage at
intergenomic transitions, pointing to interference with viral DNA
maturation and packaging of monomeric genome lengths. Resistant virus
populations, including a murine CMV (MCMV) isolate with
566-fold-decreased drug sensitivity, were selected in vitro. Sequencing
of the six open reading frames (ORFs) known to be essentially involved
in viral DNA cleavage and packaging identified mutations in ORFs UL56,
UL89, and UL104. Construction of MCMV recombinants expressing different
combinations of murine homologues of mutant UL56, UL89, and UL104 and
analysis of drug susceptibilities clearly demonstrated that mutant ORFs
UL89 exon II (M360I) and M56 (P202A I208N) individually confer
resistance to BAY 38-4766. A combination of both mutant proteins
exhibited a strong synergistic effect on resistance, reconstituting the high-resistance phenotype of the in vitro mutant. These findings are
consistent with genetic mapping of resistance to TCRB
(2,5,6-trichloro-1-
-D-ribofuranosyl benzimidazole)
(P. M. Krosky et al., J. Virol. 72:4721-4728, 1998) and
provide further indirect evidence that proteins encoded by UL89 and
UL56 function as two subunits of the CMV terminase. While these studies
also suggest that the molecular mechanism of BAY 38-4766 is distinct
from that of benzimidazole ribonucleosides, they also offer an
explanation for the excellent specificity and tolerability of BAY
38-4766, since mammalian DNA does not undergo comparable maturation steps.
*
Corresponding author. Present address: Bayer
Corporation, Pharmaceutical Division, Cancer Research, West
Haven, CT 06516-4175. Phone: (203) 812-2922. Fax: (203) 812-5467. E-mail: Sabine.Hallenberger.b{at}bayer.com.

Present address: Bayer Corporation, Pharmaceutical Division, Cancer
Research, West Haven, CT 06516-4175.

Present address: Aventis Pharma AG, D-60486 Frankfurt am Main,
Germany.
Journal of Virology, October 2001, p. 9077-9086, Vol. 75, No. 19
0022-538X/01/$04.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/JVI.75.19.9077-9086.2001
Copyright © 2001, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
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