Scientists Have Submitted A New Drug To Treat HIV

Scientists Have Submitted A New Drug To Treat HIV.
Scientists are reporting cock's-crow but cheering results from a changed drug that blocks HIV as it attempts to invade humanitarian cells. The approach differs from most au courant antiretroviral therapy, which tries to limit the virus only after it has gained player to cells penile enlargement surgery in the auburn. The medication, called VIR-576 for now, is still in the prematurely phases of development.

But researchers say that if it is successful, it might also circumvent the medicine resistance that can undermine standard therapy, according to a report published Dec 22 2010 in Science Translational Medicine. The fresh near is an attractive one for a number of reasons, said Dr Michael Horberg, manager of HIV/AIDS for Kaiser Permanente in Santa Clara, California. "Theoretically it should have fewer party paraphernalia and indeed had minimal adverse events in this study and there's indubitably less of a chance of mutation in developing resistance to medication," said Horberg, who was not confused in the study.

Viruses replicate inside cells and scientists have fancy known that this is when they tend to mutate - potentially developing untrodden ways to resist drugs. "It's for the most part accepted that it's harder for a virus to mutate largest cell walls".

The new drug focuses on HIV at this pre-invasion stage. "VIR-576 targets a go of the virus that is different from that targeted by all other HIV-1 inhibitors," explained chew over co-author Frank Kirchhoff, a professor at the Institute of Molecular Virology, University Hospital of Ulm in Ulm, Germany, who, along with several other researchers, holds a conspicuous on the inexperienced medication. The end is the gp41 fusion peptide of HIV, the "sticky" end of the virus's outer membrane, which "shoots as if a 'harpoon'" into the body's cells, the authors said.

The boat of this peptide is a sooner step in the virus's bid to settle host cells. Although there are two other drugs on the market, maraviroc and T-20, which also fend the virus from entering cells, they don't object fusion peptides. That makes this trial the original time that scientists have seen that fusion peptides are a worthwhile target in the bickering against HIV/AIDS.

And given that fusion peptides also provide a point of entry for many other viruses, from measles to Ebola and hepatitis B and C, scientists guess that the master plan could be turned against these illnesses as well. The 18 patients with HIV in this unpretentious phase I/II trial took either 0,5 or 1,5 or 5 grams of VIR-576 a light of day for 10 days via injection. Those taking the highest portion dictum a 95 percent reduction in their average viral load, the lot of HIV in the blood, without developing severe adverse effects.

And "They were getting results that are comparable to maraviroc and T-20 and certainly comparable to what's seen with intracellular drugs". But the same factors that have restrictive the use of maraviroc and T-20 are also proper to get in the way here as well, to wit the cost and the fact that they must be given by injection (because of the large size of the molecule), he warned.

The needle-vs-pill vault is something patients and doctors have to contend with in many settings, not just HIV. For example, "we all separate that insulin guts great in diabetic patients but the hard part is convincing patients to absolutely take it". Hoping to get around the problem, the researchers are now searching for a smaller molecule to do the same job.

So "The next big look is to use the house of VIR-576 and its viral target (the fusion peptide) to construct small molecule inhibitors that act by the same mechanism but are orally available. We will genesis to test the first compounds next year, but how large it will take such drugs make it to the market is illogical to say. The bottom line is, yes, any time that you can arouse a new mechanism to attack the virus - and certainly if you can stop the virus from getting into the host cells - that's a definitely good thing read full article. But this isn't near prime-time," Horberg concluded.