Balancing Host Defense and Viral Tolerance for the Development of Next-Generation Broad-Spectrum Antiviral Agents

The human immune system has evolved to cope with various virus infections using two major strategies: host defense and viral tolerance. The host defense relies on the innate and adaptive immune responses to control virus replication, while the viral tolerance allows sufficient virus replication in the host with minimal or no clinical signs. Generally, a balanced host defense and viral tolerance can guarantee health from infections, while disturbed immune homeostasis usually results in diseases. It is desirable to develop drugs/therapeutics to enhance the invulnerability of host immune equilibrium to combat viral infections. In this review, we summarize the advanced understanding on mechanisms of both the host defense against and tolerance to virus infections, and therapeutic agents/approaches that work by modulating the balance between host defense and tolerance.

• Publication year

  2025

• Venue

  Pathogens

• Publication date

  2025-09-01

• Fields of study

  Medicine

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.3390/pathogens14090911PMID 41011811PMCID 12472715
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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