Scientists Have Submitted A New Drug To Treat HIV

Scientists Have Submitted A New Drug To Treat HIV.
Scientists are reporting ancient but optimistic results from a new drug that blocks HIV as it attempts to invade considerate cells. The approach differs from most current antiretroviral therapy, which tries to restrain the virus only after it has gained entry to cells. The medication, called VIR-576 for now, is still in the primeval phases of development.

But researchers say that if it is successful, it might also circumvent the drug resistance that can subvert standard therapy, according to a report published Dec 22 2010 in Science Translational Medicine. The experimental approach is an attractive one for a number of reasons, said Dr Michael Horberg, head of HIV/AIDS for Kaiser Permanente in Santa Clara, California. "Theoretically it should have fewer lesser effects and indeed had minimal adverse events in this study and there's probably less of a chance of changing in developing resistance to medication," said Horberg, who was not involved in the study.

Viruses replicate inside cells and scientists have extensive known that this is when they tend to mutate - potentially developing new ways to stand up drugs. "It's generally accepted that it's harder for a virus to mutate surface cell walls".

The new drug focuses on HIV at this pre-invasion stage. "VIR-576 targets a neighbourhood of the virus that is different from that targeted by all other HIV-1 inhibitors," explained study 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 evident on the unfamiliar medication. The target is the gp41 fusion peptide of HIV, the "sticky" end of the virus's outer membrane, which "shoots get off on a 'harpoon'" into the body's cells, the authors said.