DRUG DISCOVERY:
HIV/AIDS
The Innovators and Advances of HIV/AIDS
The Discovery of the HIV Virus
The discovery of the HIV virus came about in the 1980's, shortly after its first outbreak in the United States. In the year 1984, the research groups of Dr. Gallo, Dr. Luc Montagnier at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, and Dr. Jay Levy at the University of California, San Francisco, discover a virus that they believed to be the cause of AIDS. The virus was known under different names: HTLV-III, LAV, and ARV. Finally, in 1986, the International Committee on the Taxonomy of Viruses declares that the AIDS-causing virus will be called the Human Immunodeficiency Virus. This then provided a singular target for blood tests, as well as the opportunity to conduct proper research for a treatment of the virus.
The Discovery of Different Tests to Screen for HIV
On March 2, 1985, "the FDA approved the first antibody-screening test for use in donated blood and plasma" (5.2). The test was called ELISA, the enzyme linked immunosorbant assay test kit, and it screened for antibodies to HIV. It was produced and approved a few years after the HIV virus was found. The ELISA test would then pave the way for many other kinds of blood test, such as the Western blot testing kit and Novopath HIV-1 Immunoblot test.
The Discovery of Various Drugs to Treat HIV
The very first HIV combating drug approved by the FDA was Zidovudine (AZT). Zidovudine is classified as a Nucleoside Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitor. Zidovudine was also used to prevent the transmission of HIV from the mother to the child. In order to treat an HIV infection, one must take a regimen of different medicines specifically for controlling the virus. This method was made easier when combination drugs for HIV were invented. Atripla was one of the first, combining two nucleoside reverse transcriptase medicines with one non-nucleoside reverse trasncriptase drug. Following Atripla, two other combination drugs, named Complera and Striblid, would also be used for treating an HIV infection.
The Search for a Cure
Currently, no cure exists for an HIV infection, however, there is research underway in search for one. Many scientists hope to discover a cure for the retrovirus, one of these being Dr. Ole Søgaard, a reseacher for the Aarhus University Hospital in Denmark. He believes that they "will be successful in activating HIV from the reservoirs" and "getting the patients' immune system to recognise the virus and destroy it" (5.8).
Also, there have been rare cases in which people who were previously diagnosed HIV positive immediately sought medical attention and were declared to be HIV negative. The first patient who was cured was the "Berlin Patient", also known as Timothy Brown. Timothy, a middle-aged man, had leukemia and received a bone-marrow transplant. After his transplant, he was said to be cured of the virus, due to the fact that he received a bone-marrow transplant from a donor who was genetically resistant to an HIV infection. More recently, two babies, one of which is now famous as the "Mississippi Baby", who have previously been infected with the virus, were tested to be HIV free after receiving early treatment.
Many reseachers speculate that destroying the HIV reservoir before it can multiply are one of the ways in which the virus can be stopped from damaging the body's immune system. In a few years from now, maybe a cure for HIV will be readily made available for the public.
