Scientists Have Submitted A New Drug To Treat HIV

Scientists Have Submitted A New Drug To Treat HIV.
Scientists are reporting antiquated but auspicious results from a creative drug that blocks HIV as it attempts to invade child cells. The approach differs from most in the know antiretroviral therapy, which tries to limit the virus only after it has gained memo to cells jepang. 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 hallucinogen resistance that can undermine standard therapy, according to a report published Dec 22 2010 in Science Translational Medicine. The strange proposition is an attractive one for a number of reasons, said Dr Michael Horberg, chief honcho of HIV/AIDS for Kaiser Permanente in Santa Clara, California. "Theoretically it should have fewer facet slang shit and indeed had minimal adverse events in this study and there's undoubtedly less of a chance of mutation in developing resistance to medication," said Horberg, who was not tortuous in the study.

Viruses replicate inside cells and scientists have lengthy known that this is when they tend to mutate - potentially developing budding ways to resist drugs. "It's largely accepted that it's harder for a virus to mutate limit cell walls," Horberg explained.

The new drug focuses on HIV at this pre-invasion stage. "VIR-576 targets a neck of the woods of the virus that is conflicting from that targeted by all other HIV-1 inhibitors," explained examination 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 charter on the altered medication. The objective is the gp41 fusion peptide of HIV, the "sticky" end of the virus's outer membrane, which "shoots be fond of a 'harpoon'" into the body's cells, the authors said.

The inaugurate of this peptide is a first step in the virus's order to inhabit host cells. Although there are two other drugs on the market, maraviroc and T-20, which also arrest the virus from entering cells, they don't end fusion peptides. That makes this pest the first time that scientists have seen that fusion peptides are a profitable target in the fight against HIV/AIDS.

And given that fusion peptides also provide a sense of entry for many other viruses, from measles to Ebola and hepatitis B and C, scientists speculate that the strategy could be turned against these illnesses as well. The 18 patients with HIV in this unpretentious phase I/II distress took either 0,5 or 1,5 or 5 grams of VIR-576 a date for 10 days via injection. Those taking the highest quantity saw a 95 percent reduction in their unexceptional viral load, the amount of HIV in the blood, without developing grave adverse effects.

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

The needle-vs-pill obstacle is something patients and doctors have to contend with in many settings, not just HIV, Horberg said. For example, "we all recollect that insulin mill great in diabetic patients but the hard part is convincing patients to as a matter of fact 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 stage is to use the construction of VIR-576 and its viral target (the fusion peptide) to coin small molecule inhibitors that act by the same mechanism but are orally available," Kirchhoff said. "We will blench to test the oldest compounds next year, but how long it will take such drugs make it to the superstore is impossible to say". "The bottom line is, yes, any experience that you can find a new mechanism to attack the virus - and certainly if you can impede the virus from getting into the host cells - that's a as a matter of fact good thing rxlistplus.com. But this isn't near prime-time," Horberg concluded.