HIV Drug Offers Long-Lasting Protection Against Infection
by The Daily Eye Team March 27 2014, 2:58 pm Estimated Reading Time: 0 mins, 38 secsResearchers at the Rockefeller University and at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have tested a reformulated HIV drug that offers long-lasting protection against infection from the virus that causes AIDS. The drug, GSK744, developed by the British pharmaceutical giant Galaxo Smith Kline, is a version of dolutegravir (Tivicay), an HIV drug already on the market.
The tests were performed using macaque monkeys, and found to protect the monkeys from repeated exposure to a monkey/human version of the virus (called SHIV, for “simian human immunodeficiency virus”) under conditions designed to replicate sexual transmission. In the study conducted at the CDC, researchers injected GSK744 monthly into six female monkeys, and then exposed them twice weekly to SHIV intra-vaginally.