New Drugs at CROI (Retrovirus Conference, Feb., LA)

[pinto]

New Drugs at CROI: The Four Musketeers
New drugs, new targets, new hope

by Jeff Berry

The most exciting news to come out of the 14th Retrovirus Conference held in Los Angeles during February related to new drugs currently in development, including two integrase inhibitors, an entry inhibitor, and a second-generation non-nucleoside. Dr. John Mellors of the University of Pittsburgh introduced the late breaker session on Tuesday evening, remarking, “I don’t think it’s an understatement to say that this session marks a milestone in the treatment of HIV in resistant patients.”

Raltegravir

In the late breaker session on Tuesday, David Cooper, MD of the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia presented 16 and 24-week data from Phase 3 studies of Merck’s integrase inhibitor raltegravir (formerly known as MK-0518). Integrase inhibitors belong to a new class of drugs that target HIV at a different point in the HIV lifecycle.

Maraviroc

Also at Tuesday’s late breaker session, Howard Mayer, MD of Pfizer presented 24-week data on their oral CCR5 antagonist maraviroc, which belongs to an entirely new class of drug that blocks HIV at the point of entry into the CD4 cell.

Elvitegravir

Andrew Zolopa, MD of the Stanford University School of Medicine presented 24-week data on the Phase 2b study of Gilead’s integrase inhibitor elvitegravir, formerly known as GS-9137.

TMC-278

Anton Pozniak, MD of Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London, UK gave a late breaker presentation on TMC-278, Tibotec’s second generation non-nucleoside that is currently in a randomized, controlled Phase 2b dose-finding study in treatment-naïve patients.

< full article, conference coverage at Test Positive Aware Network (TPAN) website: >

http://tpan.com/publications/pa/07_03/new_drugs.shtml