How is protease related to AIDS?

Answer 1

The third class of antiretroviral drugs developed against HIV were the protease inhibitors. These work far back in the life cycle of HIV, after host cell integration but before budding. These drugs affect the enzyme protease, which is used to cut up the HIV protein to be packaged into virions.

When the cell produces HIV proteins, the raw material is in a long connected string. The enzyme protease acts as a "scissor" to cut up the string into the protein for each virion. Protease inhibitors prevent protease from doing this. They resemble pieces of the protein string that protease usually cuts. This disrupts the cutting process, which prevents the chain from being cut into small pieces, which prevents HIV from making copies of itself.