Question
Any info on a new drug called KP1461?
31 March 2008. Related: All topics, Cure, Living with HIV long-term.
I had a scare recently in my life and since then I think i have become a better person. I have tested negative at 15 weeks and am finally satisfied with my result. In this process I learnt a great deal about HIV and have developed a great deal of sympathy and care about people who have HIV. I have spent days researching online and have found that that their may be hope for people to get off medications in the near future. There is a drug being tested called KP1461 by the FDA which has gone through the 1st phase and it is in the second phase of testing. It looks very promising and just maybe this will be the answer. It is too early to get ecstatic but I hope that this is the one for the sake of all the brothers and sisters out there . Have any of you done any reading on this and does it in your opinion look promising? Appreciate your comments.
Answer
Thanks for your email about your experiences. Often people find that when they really have to think about HIV on a personal level, it is the first time that they really learn of understand what is involved.
Current treatments already work very well for most people, but of course, we are also optimistic that even better treatment may be developed in the future. There is a lot of ongoing research into both new drugs and drugs that work in new ways to existing drugs.
KP1461 is one of many promising compounds but it is too early to know whether it will be approved as a new drug.
It works in an interesting way – by making the virus makes so many mistakes that it is unable to reproduce itself. Whether this works in practice still needs to be looked at in trials – which are already enrolling. Even if it works in the short-term though, on it’s own this isn’t going to be a cure for HIV, as it won’t reduce HIV-infected immune cells that are ‘dormant’ or ‘resting’. If the treatment is stopped, the virus comes back from these sleeping cells.
The UK-CAB met with Koronis, the company manufacturing KP1461 last year.
An interview with the researchers involved in this compound was included in AIDS Treatment News.
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