A drug repurposing screen identifies decitabine as an HSV-1 antiviral.

Herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) is a highly prevalent human pathogen that causes a range of clinical manifestations, including oral and genital herpes, keratitis, encephalitis, and disseminated neonatal disease. Despite its significant health and economic burden, there is currently only a handful of approved antiviral drugs to treat HSV-1 infection. Acyclovir and its analogs are the first-line treatment, but resistance often arises during prolonged treatment periods, such as in immunocompromised patients. Therefore, there is a critical need to identify novel antiviral agents against HSV-1. Here, we performed a drug repurposing screen, testing the ability of 1,900 safe-in-human drugs to inhibit HSV-1 infection in vitro. The screen identified decitabine, a cytidine analog that is used to treat myelodysplastic syndromes and acute myeloid leukemia, as a potent anti-HSV-1 agent. We show that decitabine is effective in inhibiting HSV-1 infection in multiple cell types, including human keratinocytes, that it synergizes with acyclovir, and acyclovir-resistant HSV-1 is still sensitive to decitabine. We further show that decitabine causes G > C and C > G transversions across the viral genome, suggesting it exerts its antiviral activity by lethal mutagenesis, although a role for decitabine's known targets, DNA methyl-transferases, has not been ruled out.

Importance: Herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) is a prevalent human pathogen with a limited arsenal of antiviral agents, resistance to which can often develop during prolonged treatment, such as in the case of immunocompromised individuals. Development of novel antiviral agents is a costly and prolonged process, making new antivirals few and far between. Here, we employed an approach called drug repurposing to investigate the potential anti-HSV-1 activity of drugs that are known to be safe in humans, shortening the process of drug development considerably. We identified a nucleoside analog named decitabine as a potent anti-HSV-1 agent in cell culture and investigated its mechanism of action. Decitabine synergizes with the current anti herpetic acyclovir and increases the rate of mutations in the viral genome. Thus, decitabine is an attractive candidate for future studies in animal models to inform its possible application as a novel HSV-1 therapy.