This is the third article in a series of updates on research coming out of the prestigious Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) held in early March 2018. In the first article, I reported the case of what appears to be a real patient cured of HIV infection. In the second article, I reported on a series of studies related to improving HIV disease therapy, highlighting some adverse effects of treatment and possible ways to improve treatments.
In this last article, I will report on a few new potential therapies. I say potential therapies because we never can predict what the future will hold. While some of these experimental drugs look good now, both in terms of effectiveness and safety, we could see problems in larger studies that could halt their development.
We’ve had some great drugs and got some new ones in 2018 (see Closing out 2018 with a Review of Some of Our Successes in HIV Medicine), but new drugs are ALWAYS needed to stay one step ahead of viral development of resistance to these powerful medicines.
Gilead Sciences is developing a new product, identified as GS-6207, as a long-acting treatment for HIV infection. This drug belongs to a totally different class of HIV drugs and works differently. It belongs to a