BEIJING, July 11 (AFP) - A Chinese pharmaceutical company has developed a new drug to fight AIDS which aims to block the HIV virus from entering cells, state media said Monday.
The medicine, which is undergoing clinical trials, came out of four years of research by Zhou Genfa, chairman of FusoGen Pharmaceuticals based in northeast China's Tianjin city, the China Daily said.
"Normally, the HIV virus invades the human body by fusing the cell's membrane," Gao Fu, head of the microbiology research institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, was quoted saying at a forum on new HIV/AIDS medication in Beijing Sunday.
"So the key is to safeguard the 'gate' and prevent the occurrence of membrane fusion," Gao said.
The new medication, which is considered a fusion inhibitor, is able to prevent the virus from attacking cells, Zhou claims.
He said he had been inspired by T20, the first drug in a new class of fusion inhibitors developed by a company in the United States which was granted marketing approval by the US Food and Drug Administration in March 2003.
But Zhou said his medication, which has been registered as a new medicine with China's State Food and Drug Administration, employs a different molecular modelling.
Its price will be "significantly" lower than T20 which can cost 20,000 US dollars per patient per year, he said.
The new medication is likely to hit the market at the end of next year, the report said.
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