What is "stampidine"

Stampidine is an experimental nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor (NRTI) with anti- HIV activity.

It is a derivative of stavudine (d4T, brand name Zerit), and has been designed to avoid dependence on the rate limiting step of phosphorylation of stavudine to stavudine monophosphate. This is governed by the supply of thymidine kinase that is available, and stavudine is poorly phosphorylated to its monophosphate form in thymidine kinase-deficient cells.