Two Drugs Fight HIV

The combination between two drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration revealed to be an efficient treatment against HIV in mice.

Scientists at the University of Minnesota Academic Health Center have combined two drugs currently used against pre-cancer and cancer therapy, and found out that the HIV infection in the mouse model was eliminated, as the virus mutated itself to death.

This breakthrough is the result of a collaboration between molecular virologists Louis Mansky, PhD, and Christine Clouser, PhD, of the Institute for Molecular Virology and School of Dentistry, along with medicinal chemist Steven Patterson, PhD, from the Center for Drug Design.

Besides the fact that this is the first time that the HIV virus is eliminated, this is also a new approach to it, one that attacks the virus without causing toxic side effects.

Mansky said that these “findings provide hope that such an approach will someday help the 33 million people worldwide who currently live with HIV.”

The gemcitabine and decitabine concentrations used in pre-clinical trials in mice were effective below the current levels used for treating cancer.

As the two drugs are already FDA approved, researchers hope that if tests are also successful for other larger animal models, they might make a step forward in the development of drugs for human use.

The HIV virus mutates very quickly and it is very hard to target and treat successfully, so instead of trying to stop the growth and replication of the virus, this new drug combination did the exact opposite: it made it evolve beyond control until “lethal mutagenesis”.

Mansky explained that “HIV's ability to mutate makes it difficult to target and treat ... we wanted to take advantage of this behavior by stimulating HIV's mutation rate, essentially using the virus as a weapon against itself.”

The researchers are now studying the modifications that are necessary for developing a version of the drug that can be absorbed by the human body if taken orally, Science Daily reports.

This study was funded by the Center for Drug Design, Academic Health Center and the National Institutes of Health and the findings were recently published online in the Journal of Virology.