Antiviral Chemistry & Chemotherapy 14:31–37 1©2003 International Medical Press 0956-3202/02/$17.00

The development of new nucleoside analogues as antiviral agents has remained an attractive research field. Due to their hydrolytic stability, carbocyclic nucleosides have taken a particular place in the design process of new antiviral agents (Marquez, 1996). Most of these compounds are cyclopentane derivatives and less work has been done on conformationally more rigid carbocyclic analogues such as cyclohexane nucleosides. Some of these cyclohexane nucle-osides were synthesized in the past but they were devoid of antiviral activity (Schaeffer et al., 1964, 1968; Pérez-Pérez, 1995; Mikhailov et al., 1996; Maurinsh et al., 1997). However, the more flexible cyclohexene nucleosides look more promising. Indeed, introduction of a double bond into the cyclohexane ring could facilitate the phosphoryla-tion of the nucleoside analogue and their eventual incorpo