Word: inhibitors
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...Currently available ARVs work at both the beginning and the end of the HIV life cycle; the most recently approved class in 2003, called fusion inhibitors, start early, working to block HIV's attempt to bind and infect healthy cells to begin with. Next come the two oldest classes of drugs, which prevent the virus from transforming its genetic material from RNA to DNA. And finally, jumping to the very end of HIV's mission, the protease inhibitor drugs keep the virus from making its final protein coat, which it needs to re-emerge from the infected cell in order...
...Pfizer's maraviroc, one of the two new compounds described this week, steps in just after HIV has successfully bound to a healthy cell; called an entry inhibitor, it blocks the virus from entering the cell and integrating its viral genetic material into the host cell's genome. In a study of more than 1000 patients who had developed resistance to at least three of the four ARV classes, twice the number of patients given maraviroc versus those taking placebo enjoyed undetectable levels of virus after eight months. The results were enough to convince Pfizer to apply for approval...
...second drug, an integrase inhibitor from Merck, aims to tackle HIV where it hurts the most - by blocking the integrase enzyme, which the virus uses to insert its genes into a host cell's genome and hijack the machinery to churn out more copies of itself. Called isentress, the experimental agent helped 75% of patients reduce their viral load of HIV to acceptable levels, compared with only 40% of patients given placebo...
...even as newer classes of ARVs arrive, drugs cannot be the only answer to AIDS. Already, says Dr. Roy Steigbigel of State University of New York at Stony Brook, and one of the leading investigators of Merck's isentress, volunteers have begun to develop resistance to the integrase inhibitor - a drug that hasn't even yet been approved...
...luckier. Like Saleem, she was infected at birth by her mother, a crack addict who was later murdered. Placed with foster parents the day after she was born, Daniels was 3 when she became one of the first 70 children in the U.S. to test a protease inhibitor. Even in the brief span of her lifetime, Daniels has watched pediatric-AIDS treatments improve significantly. When she was an infant, her adoptive mother Maryann had to wake her up at 4 a.m. to administer the first of four daily doses. Today the blond, blue-eyed girl, who looks like any active...