Protease inhibitors: a tale of two companies
Cohen, J.
Science 272(5270): 1882-1883
1996
ISSN/ISBN: 0036-8075 PMID: 8658156 Document Number: 468121
Part of a special report on the new face of AIDS. Data on two protease inhibitors, indinavir and ritonavir, have caused a paradigm shift for people living with HIV and those studying it. The early successes of these protease inhibitors, both of which were licensed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, suggest that the hundreds of millions of dollars invested in AIDS drug studies may finally be paying off. For example, trials have shown that indinavir, when used with two other anti-HIV drugs that attack a different target, could reduce the amount of the virus in people so dramatically that the most sensitive tests could not detect any virus in over 85 percent of the patients. The writer chronicles the development from lab bench to pharmacy shelf of indinavir by Merck and Co. and ritonavir by Abbott Laboratories.