FM DECEMBER 2018 ISSUE - digital edition

in 2017, nearly 5,000 new infections per day.
Efforts to develop an effective vaccine against HIV are
getting longer than expected as the tricky virus hoodwink
every attempt by researchers to pin it down. Meanwhile, the
emergence of drug-resistant strains of HIV appears to be
casting a shadow over the UNAID’s stated goals of getting rid
of the virus in the next 10-12 years.
Innovators in the field are now looking at alternate
therapeutic strategies to tame the virus as a definitive solution
that can totally eliminate the microbe is nowhere in sight.
5,000
people are newly infected
with HIV each day.
Antibody prophylaxis
Priming the immune system to combat the virus using broadly
neutralizing antibodies (bNAbs) is one such an approach.
Rockefeller University researchers have come out with data
from Phase 1b clinical trials showing that a combination of
two bNAbs is capable of suppressing HIV for months at a
time. Experimental antibodies 3BNC117 and 10-1074 fight
HIV from two different pathways, significantly reducing
chances of resistance if both drugs are administered
together.
The researchers report that a six-week course of
three injections of the two bNABs suppressed HIV for
an average of 21 weeks, and for over 30 weeks in some
patients. In a second study in viremic patients, published
DECEMBER 2018 / FUTURE MEDICINE / 19