HIV/AIDS Glossary

Maturation inhibitors (MIs) are a class of drugs that act during the last stage of the HIV life cycle. MIs bind to a long HIV protein chain called Gag and prevent the HIV protease enzyme from breaking up the Gag protein chain. By blocking protease activity, MIs prevent immature HIV from becoming a mature virus that can infect other CD4 cells. Currently, MIs are still under clinical investigation, and there are no MIs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).