By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent
FORT DETRICK,
Md. (Reuters) - John Coffin has a shiny new lab, a multi-million
dollar budget and a team of six different research groups to play
with.
Such a brand-new
facility is a dream for government-funded research scientists,
who are more used to dealing with leaking ceilings and cracked
floors.
But Coffin's
two-day-a-week job running the National Cancer Institute's HIV
drug resistance program is serious business. Its very existence
shows that the U.S. government realizes a cure for AIDS is a very
long way away.
World Health
Organization figures released ahead of World AIDS Day this week
showed that more than 21 million people have died from AIDS since
it was identified two decades ago. Thirty-six million people are
infected with the virus.
There is still
no cure, and no vaccine. And the lucky few people who can get
the cocktails of drugs that suppress HIV are finding that they
stop working after a time.
Coffin's job
was created to face up to that stark fact and to try to find ways
to identify and fight HIV's resistance to drugs.
``We've got
six research groups doing different things,'' Coffin said in an
interview. ``We have a clinical program, doing studies on the
virus's genetic variation, new approaches to salvage therapy in
patients that have failed all kinds of other drugs.''
Coffin, a
molecular biologist and virus expert at Tufts University in Boston,
travels to the converted Army base at Fort Detrick in Maryland
-- ironically once a site for research into biological weapons
-- to oversee the research.
While his
lab tests the effects of existing drugs, hundreds of labs around
the country and around the world are racing to come up with new
and better drugs.
103 New
Drugs And Vaccines In Development
More than
100 such drugs and vaccines are in the research pipeline, the
Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA),
a drug company industry group, says in its latest report on AIDS
drugs.
Most are aimed
against the diseases that take root after HIV has ravaged a patient's
immune system -- cancer, fungal infections, pneumonia. The industry
group says 30 anti-viral drugs are being developed, most of them
improvements on existing drugs such as the protease inhibitors.
``A lot of
it is really second and third generations of that which is out
there, which is not surprising because almost all drugs go through
that evolutionary process,'' PhRMA executive John Siegfried said
in a telephone interview.
``Working
toward better dosing schedules, working toward fewer pills is
also a part of it.'' HIV patients currently have to take dozens
of pills a day, at different times and often with or without certain
foods.
New approaches
include the fusion inhibitors -- such as AnorMED of Canada's's
AMD-3100 and T-20, being developed by Hoffman-La Roche and Trimeris
of Durham, North Carolina. These drugs prevent HIV from attaching
to the immune cells it attacks.
``If you can
really interfere with its ability to enter a cell, that would
be fantastic,'' Siegfried said.
The survey
also finds 13 vaccines being tested in people, the furthest along
of which is VaxGen's AIDSVAX, and immune system modulators meant
to help the body fight off the virus with its own ammunition.
Siegfried
joins other experts who fear that news about the available drugs
is making people complacent and lulling them into risky behaviors.
``The fact
that the death rate dropped 80 percent (in the United States)
and the fact that people are living much longer is misinterpreted
by many, many people as meaning AIDS is no longer a threat in
the United States,'' he said.
``What really
disturbs me as private citizen is that AIDS is preventable and
we have known how to prevent it for over a decade now and yet
still the rate of infection is high. Condom use and safe sex practices
will prevent the spread of AIDS."
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