Résumé
One of the major characteristics of the human immunodeficiency viruses (HIVs) is their extremely high genetic variability, which makes HIV one of the fastest evolving among many other human pathogens. Viral heterogeneity is one of the classical means by which HIV evades the host immune system, and also leads to the resistance to various antiretroviral regimens. Highly active antiretroviral therapy to treat HIV-infected patients is mainly based on a combination of protease and reverse transcriptase inhibitors. However, resistance to these drugs, the persistence of latent viral reservoirs and long-term toxicities require the continuous need to improve these classes of drugs and to develop new drugs with other targets. Therefore, a new generation of drugs has been recently developed to inhibit viral entry into the cell.