2008 Woodie Awards
Scientist finds drugs for rare HIV strain
Issue date: 4/3/08
Researchers at Hopkins are changing the way that drug developers think about antiviral drug design and, in so doing, are making advances in the treatment of a strain of the HIV virus.
In a paper recently published in the journal Chemical and Biological Drug Design, a group of Hopkins biologists have introduced a "new paradigm" for the creation of effective antiviral drugs, according to Ernesto Freire, one of the authors of the paper.
"We had a very simple goal; to evaluate all the inhibitors that were being approved or under development and identify the characteristics that make some inhibitors good and some bad," Freire said.
Freire's research on HIV began around 10 years ago, but in the past two years his lab has been focusing on HIV-2, a strain of the HIV virus that infects between one and two million people worldwide.
In comparison, about 40 million people are infected with HIV-1, so all of the FDA-approved antiviral drugs on the market have been designed to target HIV-1 specifically. The relatively smaller population who have HIV-2 don't provide enough economic stimulus for drug companies to focus on HIV-2 therapies.
Because of the lack of treatments tailored to HIV-2, Freire's lab decided to investigate which existing antiviral drugs are most effective in treating HIV-2.
An inhibitor is a drug that blocks the maturation of a virus. HIV uses a protease enzyme to process its proteins and allow it to mature. A protease inhibitor stops this process from occurring and thus prevents the virus from reproducing.
Evan Brower, a graduate student who works in Freire's lab, did the actual testing of the HIV-1 drugs. "My direct role was to take the nine clinically approved inhibitors for HIV-1 protease and see how well they worked for HIV-2 protease," Brower said.
Brower described the analysis as the most challenging aspect of the work. After obtaining his results, it was very difficult to explain them. He ended up testing more than 250 possible variables, but found that one - a property of the inhibitor called cap size - was the most "inhibitory structural parameter," meaning that it has the biggest impact in the determination of an inhibitor's success against HIV-2.
In a paper recently published in the journal Chemical and Biological Drug Design, a group of Hopkins biologists have introduced a "new paradigm" for the creation of effective antiviral drugs, according to Ernesto Freire, one of the authors of the paper.
"We had a very simple goal; to evaluate all the inhibitors that were being approved or under development and identify the characteristics that make some inhibitors good and some bad," Freire said.
Freire's research on HIV began around 10 years ago, but in the past two years his lab has been focusing on HIV-2, a strain of the HIV virus that infects between one and two million people worldwide.
In comparison, about 40 million people are infected with HIV-1, so all of the FDA-approved antiviral drugs on the market have been designed to target HIV-1 specifically. The relatively smaller population who have HIV-2 don't provide enough economic stimulus for drug companies to focus on HIV-2 therapies.
Because of the lack of treatments tailored to HIV-2, Freire's lab decided to investigate which existing antiviral drugs are most effective in treating HIV-2.
An inhibitor is a drug that blocks the maturation of a virus. HIV uses a protease enzyme to process its proteins and allow it to mature. A protease inhibitor stops this process from occurring and thus prevents the virus from reproducing.
Evan Brower, a graduate student who works in Freire's lab, did the actual testing of the HIV-1 drugs. "My direct role was to take the nine clinically approved inhibitors for HIV-1 protease and see how well they worked for HIV-2 protease," Brower said.
Brower described the analysis as the most challenging aspect of the work. After obtaining his results, it was very difficult to explain them. He ended up testing more than 250 possible variables, but found that one - a property of the inhibitor called cap size - was the most "inhibitory structural parameter," meaning that it has the biggest impact in the determination of an inhibitor's success against HIV-2.
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j hawkings
posted 9/10/08 @ 6:10 AM EST
This is a very good news that scientists at Hopkins are looking forward for the devlopment of drugs towards hiv2. I am very happy about it and wants to thank them. (Continued…)
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