There’s Still a Mountain to Climb

My August 20^th Mountain to Climb blog – concerning the possibility of a cure for the HIV virus – elicited some interesting additional information from Mark Fromhold (a PhD in his own right and VP of Manufacturing and Business Development at Koronis, the developer of the potential cure/treatment drug, KP-1461), which I thought you might want to know.

He wrote: “Thirty-three million people in the world live with HIV but only ≈ 10% are receiving front-line therapy. These select individuals reap the benefits from about 90% of the$14.5 billion spent annually on HIV therapeutic in the world today. All the first-line, state-of-the-art HIV drugs are based on drug mechanisms that suppress viral replication and attempt to block HIV’s spread to uninfected cells. With proper daily compliance to a lifelong drug regime, these drugs are effective in extending a patient’s expected lifespan.” Read: there are 25 million HIV-infected individuals who are not getting any treatment.

And for those 10% lucky enough to afford “cocktails,” once a patient stops taking these drugs, the HIV virus is no longer contained and can spread easily and perhaps rapidly. Further, over time, a patient’s HIV virus develops a tolerance for the inhibitors, often requiring a continuous increase in the strength or nature of the containment “cocktails.” To make matters worse, the transmission of drug-resistant HIV accounted for about 1-2% of all new infections in 2000, but as of 2009, that number had jumped to somewhere between 10-15% according to drug-developer Koronis.

KP-1461 is the product of a decade-long research effort, and tests have been conducted on 89 human subjects, who, according to Koronis, are tolerating the drug well. The HIV virus seems to have mutated significantly in such subjects, suggesting that this form of constant forced mutation may result in eradication of the virus in such infected individuals... and perhaps someday, the entire planet. Time will tell, but the cost of a longer-term clinical testing schema and fulfilling FDA requirements does require the financial resources of a big pharmaceutical company to make it happen… and there is a strong reason for big pharma to keep a “cure” product off the market as long as there are viable patents in the “treatment w/o cure” cocktails that are so profitable today. Let’s hope Koronis finds that funding partner… soon.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I have had friends and workmates die of HIV-related diseases, and anything that can be done to eradicate this dreaded disease has to be a priority.