The Chemical Entities of Biological Interest (ChEBI) ontology is downloaded weekly from EMBL-EBI at http://www.ebi.ac.uk/chebi/. The data is made available under the Creative Commons License (CC BY 3.0, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/). For more information see: Degtyarenko et al. (2008) ChEBI: a database and ontology for chemical entities of biological interest. Nucleic Acids Res. 36, D344–D350.
Guanine substituted at the 9 position by a 4-hydroxy-3-(hydroxymethyl)-2-methylidenecyclopentyl group. A synthetic analogue of 2'-deoxyguanosine, it is a nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor with selective antiviral activity against hepatitis B virus. Entecavir is phosphorylated intracellularly to the active triphosphate form, which competes with deoxyguanosine triphosphate, the natural substrate of hepatitis B virus reverse transcriptase, inhibiting every stage of the enzyme's activity, although it has no activity against HIV. It is used for the treatment of chronic hepatitis B.