MEDICAL UPDATE: Another New Antiviral

MEDICAL UPDATE: Another New Antiviral

Being Alive/Los Angeles; Being Alive Newsletter - November 1993
presented by Mark Katz, MD and reported by Jim Stoecker

We continue to have news of new antiviral drugs in development. One of the latest is ateviridine, being developed by Upjohn. This drug works at the same point in the HIV life cycle as AZT/ddI/ddC and is thus a reverse transcriptase (RT) inhibitor. However, ateviridine works in a way different from the currently available RT inhibitors.

The Upjohn antiviral is in the same class as two other recently developed drugs, nevirapine and pyridinone. This class of antivirals is unfortunately known to quickly develop resistance when used alone. They appear to work best when used in combination with the other class of RT inhibitors.

Test tube studies have shown ateviridine's effectiveness against a number of viral strains. And, what may be most significant, no virus was resistant to the drug when tried in combination with either AZT or ddI.

A Phase I study of ateviridine is being formed at USC. About 30 participants are sought with CD4 under 500 and no active opportunistic infections. For information, call Novella Quesada at 213.343.8288.
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BA931108

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