Vidarabine

Vidarabine stops replication of herpes viral DNA in 2 ways: 1) competitive inhibition of viral DNA polymerase, and consequently 2) incorporation into and termination of the growing viral DNA chain. Vidarabine is sequentially phosphorylated by kinases to the triphosphate ara-ATP, which is the active form of vidarabine that acts as both an inhibitor and a substrate of viral DNA polymerase. By acting as a substrate for viral DNA polymerase, ara-ATP competitively inhibits dATP leading to the formation of ‘faulty’ DNA. Ara-ATP can also be incorporated into the DNA strand to replace many of the adenosine bases, resulting in the disruption of DNA synthesis.