The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, periodic recurrence of viral infections, and the emergence of challenging variants has created an urgent need of alternative therapeutic approaches to combat the spread of viral infections, failing to which may pose a greater risk to mankind in future. Resilience against antiviral drugs or fast evolutionary rate of viruses is stressing the scientific community to identify new therapeutic approaches for timely control of disease. Host metabolic pathways are exquisite reservoir of energy to viruses and contribute a diverse array of functions for successful replication and pathogenesis of virus. Targeting the host factors rather than viral enzymes to cease viral infection, has emerged as an alternative antiviral strategy. This approach offers advantage in terms of increased threshold to viral resistance and can provide broad-spectrum antiviral action against different viruses. The article here provides substantial review of literature illuminating the host factors and molecular mechanisms involved in innate/adaptive responses to viral infection, hijacking of signalling pathways by viruses and the intracellular metabolic pathways required for viral replication. Host-targeted drugs acting on the pathways usurped by viruses are also addressed in this study. Host-directed antiviral therapeutics might prove to be a rewarding approach in controlling the unprecedented spread of viral infection, however the probability of cellular side effects or cytotoxicity on host cell should not be ignored at the time of clinical investigations.

持续的 COVID-19 大流行、病毒感染的周期性复发以及具有挑战性的变体的出现，迫切需要替代治疗方法来对抗病毒感染的传播，否则可能会给人类带来更大的风险。对抗病毒药物的抵抗力或病毒的快速进化速度正在迫使科学界确定​​新的治疗方法以及时控制疾病。宿主代谢途径是病毒的精巧能量库，并为病毒的成功复制和发病机制提供多种功能。针对宿主因素而不是病毒酶来阻止病毒感染，已成为一种替代的抗病毒策略。这种方法在提高病毒抗性阈值方面具有优势，并且可以提供针对不同病毒的广谱抗病毒作用。此处的文章提供了大量文献综述，阐明了宿主因素和分子机制，这些因素和分子机制涉及对病毒感染的先天/适应性反应、病毒对信号通路的劫持以及病毒复制所需的细胞内代谢途径。本研究还讨论了作用于病毒篡夺途径的宿主靶向药物。宿主导向的抗病毒疗法可能被证明是控制病毒感染前所未有的传播的一种有益方法，但是在临床研究时不应忽视对宿主细胞产生细胞副作用或细胞毒性的可能性。