(no subject)
Jul. 8th, 2004 02:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
novapsychePromising New AIDS Treatment
Offering a promising new way to attack the AIDS virus, research on monkeys suggests that an experimental drug helps keep HIV in check by blocking an enzyme that is crucial to infection.
The target is integrase, an HIV enzyme that the virus needs to hijack a patient's cells and spread. Repeated attempts to inhibit integrase's function and stall the virus have failed.
But Merck & Co. researchers report Thursday in the journal Science that they have developed an integrase inhibitor that significantly protected monkeys when given early in infection, and provided some benefit to the very sick, too.
Offering a promising new way to attack the AIDS virus, research on monkeys suggests that an experimental drug helps keep HIV in check by blocking an enzyme that is crucial to infection.
The target is integrase, an HIV enzyme that the virus needs to hijack a patient's cells and spread. Repeated attempts to inhibit integrase's function and stall the virus have failed.
But Merck & Co. researchers report Thursday in the journal Science that they have developed an integrase inhibitor that significantly protected monkeys when given early in infection, and provided some benefit to the very sick, too.