The drug tucks itself into a pocket found on almost all picornaviruses and becomes a monkey wrench in the viral machinery. A virus plastered with pleconaril can't stick to cells and infect them. There are some very severe diseases caused by the same viruses, and as a pediatric disease specialist that is where I am really looking forward to it. The best known and most lethal of the picornaviruses is polio, which is nearly eradicated thanks to global vaccination efforts. But two picornavirus subgroups are responsible for a wide array of human misery.
Rhinoviruses cause most cases of the common cold.
When healthy people get these infections, they can become seriously ill. But when these viruses infect people with impaired immune systems or transplant patients taking immunity-suppressing drugs to prevent organ rejection, the bugs can be deadly. Pleconaril co-inventor Mark McKinlay, PhD, tells WebMD that the drug has been offered to such patients on a compassionate basis. Unfortunately most of these patients have been treated late in the course of their disease, but even so we have had some pretty spectacular results. While not nearly as dangerous as bacterial meningitis, the viral version starts out just the same.