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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2017 Apr 1.
Published in final edited form as: Adv Drug Deliv Rev. 2015 May 22;99(Pt A):113–128. doi: 10.1016/j.addr.2015.05.009

Figure 2.

Figure 2

Mechanism of action for ganciclovir (GCV). HSVTK phosphorylates thymidine to thymidine monophosphate (thymidine-MP) which undergoes more phosphopylation steps by cell endogenous kinases. The final product, thymidine triphosphate (thymidine-TP) is one of the building blocks of DNA structure. GCV competes with thymidine and gets phosphorylated to ganciclovir-MP first and then ganciclovir-TP. Ganciclovir-TP blocks DNA elongation by inhibiting DNA polymerase.