A Mountain to Climb? KP-1461

According to Wikipedia, globally somewhere north of 33 million people are infected with the HIV virus; a steep rise from the estimated 8 million who had the disease in 1990. While the U.S. infection rate is above 1.2 million, the worst area on earth is Africa: “19 countries worldwide with the highest prevalence of reported infections are all African countries with more than 24.5 million, and more than 60% of the HIV-infected population.” And you may have noticed of late that HIV infections have slid far off the headline pages, relegated to occasional reporting of the ranging success of one set of “cocktails” – an expensive combination of medications – that seems able to extend HIV-lives almost indefinitely. Basketball great and entrepreneur Magic Johnson has become the poster boy for the success that is possible here, and stories about him seldom note his long-standing HIV condition. It’s just not news anymore.

But to date with about 30 million deaths worldwide since the epidemic began (about 11 thousand Americans die every year from HIV-related causes), the notion of a cure for this dreaded disease has been elusive. What if you could incent the virus to destroy itself? Is this even possible? “Koronis Pharmaceuticals, a Seattle-based biotech company, has a potential solution to the HIV epidemic with KP-1461, a new kind of drug that essentially mutates HIV into oblivion. If it works, patients could eventually get off the drug altogether and remain HIV-free.

“Traditional HIV drugs attempt to keep the virus in check by preventing it from replicating. But Koronis's KP-1461 uses a new drug mechanism--dubbed Viral Decay AccelerationT--to insert itself into the viral genome, increasing the frequency of mutations, until eventually the virus population collapses. ‘If you think of HIV as a house made of two by fours, and the genetic backbone of the virus as the foundation of that house, [the drug mechanism] replaces the two by fours with toothpicks, and eventually the house comes crashing down,’ says Dr. Mark G. Fromhold, VP of Manufacturing and Business Development at Koronis… KP-1461 might be successful in eradicating HIV in humans, but no one is really sure yet. If it does work, it won't be a cure in the traditional sense. Patients would have to take the drug for a long time as the virus slowly mutated itself to death.” FastCompany.com, August 17^th.

But there’s a catch. In a world where treating HIV is particularly expensive, the beneficiaries of this cost are, of course, the big pharmaceutical companies that rake in huge profits from expensive drugs required to keep HIV-infected people alive. They hate the possibility of a cure for this virus almost as much as they dread a cure for diabetes: “[As the clinical KP-1461] tests continue, Koronis may run into problems forming partnerships with major pharmaceutical companies that are happy with the current state of the HIV drug market. ‘The business model is predicated on the chronic application of drugs that have very high margins,’ says Koronis CEO Don Elmer.” FastCompany.com. And Koronis doesn’t have the capital to go this alone.

I’m Peter Dekom, and don’t stories like this just make you feel warm and fuzzy inside?