Carbazole Derivatives as Antiviral Agents: An Overview

Viruses represent the most common cause of infectious diseases worldwide and those with rapid propagation and high infection rates cause human and animal pandemics. These fast-spreading diseases are generally treated with antiviral drugs but, often, drug resistance occurs because of the ability of the pathogens to mutate rapidly and become less susceptible to the treatments. Even though new antivirals have been approved, e.g., in HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) and HCV (hepatitis C virus) therapeutic areas, the need to dispose of new pharmaceutical tools for the management of infections that still have no treatment is of growing interest. In these areas, carbazole represents an important privileged scaffold in drug discovery. Many compounds with a carbazolic core have been developed and some of them have shown antiviral activity. This review provides an overview on some already known carbazole derivatives, pointing the attention on the running progresses in identifying new molecules with carbazolic structure, that have shown interesting and encouraging in vitro and in vivo properties. These drugs may be exploited as valid alternatives in antiviral therapy.