Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1996. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
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The Wall Street Journal - 16 September 1996
Michael Waldholz, Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal
The new data, presented to an infectious-disease research meeting in New Orleans yesterday, suggest that the drug, one of a class of new so-called protease inhibitors, will someday join the list of new AIDS medicines that, when combined with other medicines, can greatly reduce levels of the AIDS virus circulating in the bloodstream. Protease inhibitors block an enzyme crucial to the life cycle of HIV, the AIDS virus.
Known as 141W94, the drug has been tested in only about 60 patients so far, and data on only 40 of the test subjects were presented to the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy by Robert Schooley, an infectious-disease researcher at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.
But Dr. Schooley reported that in 10 of the test patients who received the drug by itself and in its highest dosage for four weeks, the amount of the AIDS virus circulating in the bloodstream was reduced by about 99%. That sharp decline is about as good as the best that has been achieved in recent studies of four other protease-inhibitor drugs over the past two years. In addition, test patients reported the drug produced few of the side effects that have made two of the new protease drugs difficult for some people to take.
"It's a short test designed to get quick data on the potency of the drug," Dr. Schooley said in a phone interview. "Physicians treating AIDS patients with the new combination [drug] therapies are realizing that it is important to have as many [drug] choices as possible because patients react so differently to the medicines. This drug certainly looks right now as if it will make a significant contribution when it becomes available."
The field of AIDS treatment has changed dramatically with the commercial release earlier this year of three protease-inhibitor drugs; Norvir, sold by Abbott Laboratories; Crixivan sold by Merck & Co.; and Invirase sold by Roche Holding Ltd. A fourth protease inhibitor, Viracept from Agouron Pharmaceuticals Inc., will soon be made available to some patients who aren't able to take the three commercially available medicines, and it is expected to be on the market early next year.
The newest protease drug, 141W94, was created a few years ago by scientists at small biotechnology company, Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc., Boston. Soon afterward, the drug was licensed for development to the British drug maker Burroughs-Wellcome. Although laboratory research indicated that the new drug might be an especially safe and potent member of the protease-inhibitor family, human tests to confirm this belief took longer to organize than many researchers in the field expected.
Some observers said they believed the drug's development was slowed by the recent merger of Glaxo and Wellcome. Moreover, development might also have been slowed by a potential patent problem only recently settled by Vertex, observers said. Researchers close to Glaxo Wellcome said the recent, dramatic success of the other protease drugs likely encouraged the company to quicken the pace of its development efforts.
A spokeswoman at Glaxo Wellcome declined to comment on past problems, noting that "the company is moving ahead as quickly as possible" to develop the drug. The company hopes to get the drug approved for widespread sale early in 1998.
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