Race to treat Aids virus

[moobu2]

LONDON: The world's leading drugmakers are racing to be first to market with a new kind of pill that can block the Aids virus before it enters human cells, experts said yesterday.


If successful, so-called CCR5 inhibitors should have fewer toxic side effects and offer hope to patients whose virus has developed resistance to existing antiretroviral medicines.

Pfizer, with a product already in final Phase III tests, is a few months ahead, but both GlaxoSmithKline and Schering-Plough Corp are on its tail.

The discovery of a potentially new virulent strain of HIV in a New York man at the weekend has highlighted the need for fresh pharmaceutical weaponry in the fight against Aids.



http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3190940a12,00.html

[Warpy]

1. If they can come up with something like that

it would be great. HIV is a fast mutator, and current drugs are going to be useless pretty quickly. Plus, there may be a new disaster looming. They've found a possible second case of an especially virulent strain of HIV in San Diego. The first case was in NYC.

"Researchers don't know yet whether the New York and San Diego strains are an exact match, Bowen said. They also haven't determined if the three individuals know one another. It will take at least a week to decide if the HIV strains are identical, said Dr. David Ho, director of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center in Manhattan."

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20050215-9999-1n15aids.html

So now there are three cases, and we know that guy in NYC got around, both sexually and with needles.

It's going to be a very scary world if this one hits us the way the original HIV did.