Washington Blade - August 26, 2005

LONDON - Scientists hope that properties in crocodile blood may lead to new drugs to battle human infections, including HIV, the BBC reported. Crocodiles are known to heal rapidly even with serious wounds and almost without infection. Australian Adam Britton and United States expert Mark Merchant recently spent two weeks combing the Northern Territory for salt and freshwater crocs, the BBC reported. They hope to catch the creatures and sample their blood in an effort to tap into new drugs to help humans battle disease. Merchant said it appears that alligators and crocodiles are resistant to bacterial infection. "These animals are very territorial and when they fight it gets very ugly," he told the BBC. "They tear limbs off one another and leave huge gaping wounds. And, despite the fact that they live in an environment that harbor potentially a lot of pathogenic microbes, these horrible wounds seem to heal up very rapidly and almost always without infection." Merchant tested alligator blood previously and found why they are so resistant to infection: "It turns out that this complement system [of healing] is much more effective than ours," he said, even working to kill diseases including HIV. The next step is to try to find something in the animals' blood that can be recreated in a drug and used in humans to fight illness, Merchant told the BBC.

HIV 'maturation inhibitor' survives first round of testing

NEW YORK (AP) - Shares of Panacos Pharmaceuticals Inc. closed up sharply Monday after the biotech company said its experimental HIV drug demonstrated promising results in a mid-stage clinical trial. The company, formerly known as V.I. Technologies Inc., said its HIV drug candidate PA-457 met the primary endpoint of a Phase IIa clinical trial - showing a significant reduction of HIV virus in the bloodstream after 10 days of treatment. Patients taking PA-457 had a more than 90 percent average decrease in HIV levels by Day 11. In patients given the largest dose of the drug, the average viral load was reduced by 97 percent. Panacos shares rose $3.25, or 46 percent, to close at $10.30 on the Nasdaq. Graham P. Allaway, Panacos' chief operating officer, said in an interview that the company hopes to begin another round of mid-stage clinical trials that combine PA-457 with cocktails of standard HIV treatments and assess potency over several months with the intention of reducing viral loads to undetectable levels. One of the problems with standard HIV drugs, such as protease inhibitors, is that they can sometimes lessen each other's effects or even become toxic when metabolized by the liver. With PA-457, Allaway said, the drug is metabolized by a different enzyme in the liver than other HIV drugs, thereby lessening the negative effect of drug interactions. PA-457 is the first of a new class of HIV drugs called maturation inhibitors, which block the formation of capsid, a protein that coats the virus, the company said. Without the protein, immature copies of the virus are released from the host cell and are unable to infect other cells.

U.N. health agency reinstates seven Indian AIDS drugs

GENEVA (AP) - The U.N. health agency said last week it has reinstated seven Indian-made generic drugs to its list of approved HIV/AIDS medicines for use in developing countries after the manufacturer was able to prove they were the same as the patented versions. The World Health Organization removed three of the drugs - made by Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd. - from its list of generic AIDS medicines recommended for use in developing countries in August 2004. A random check failed to prove the medicines were biologically the same as the patented drugs. Ranbaxy later withdrew the other four drugs.

University tobacco study focuses on targeting of gay men, lesbians

SAN FRANCISCO - In a paper released last week, researchers at the University of California at San Francisco found that boycotts of tobacco industry "allies" are more effective for tobacco control than boycotts of the industry itself, university officials said in a news release. Appearing in the latest issue of the Journal Tobacco Control, their report, "The perimetric boycott: A tool for tobacco control," studies the tobacco industry's targeting of lesbians and gay men. The researchers, led by Ruth Malone of the UCSF School of Nursing, analyzed the results of tobacco-related boycotts and found that groups that interact with the tobacco industry are more likely to be responsive to boycotters' demands because they are concerned about their reputations.

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