What is Known About the Antiviral Agents Active Against Bovine Viral Diarrhea Virus (BVDV)?

Viruses belonging to the Flaviviridae family cause clinically significant diseases in humans and animals. This family includes three genera: Pestivirus [including bovine viral diarrhea virus (BVDV)], Flavivirus [including yellow fever virus (YFV), dengue virus, and West Nile virus (WNV)], and Hepacivirus [including hepatitis C virus (HCV)]. BVDV is responsible for major losses in cattle, causing a range of clinical manifestations, and is also a problematic contaminant in the laboratory. Noncytopathic BVDV infection can remain unnoticed and infect laboratory cell lines through its presence in contaminated bovine serum used in cell culture. BVDV is considered to be a valuable surrogate virus model for identifying and characterizing antiviral agents to be used against HCV. In some aspects of viral replication, BVDV is more advantageous than the currently used HCV replicon systems. In this review, we report the design, synthesis, and activity against BVDV of a series of compounds assayed until now.