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Biotech / Medical : Agouron Pharmaceuticals (AGPH) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: per strandberg who wrote (3842)	2/18/1998 1:45:00 PM
From: Henry Niman	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6136

There are a couple of related news stories out. One was on renal problems with MRK's PI and the other was on protease mutations in blood and lymph nodes.

To: per strandberg who wrote (3842)	2/18/1998 1:59:00 PM
From: Henry Niman	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6136

Still looking for the two stories I saw earlier. Here's an AP summary of then recent conference (it was in the San Diego Union Tribune): Scientists shake up the 'AIDS cocktail' to boost potency Daniel Q. Haney ASSOCIATED PRESS 05-Feb-1998 Thursday CHICAGO -- The AIDS cocktail is being shaken and stirred. More than 200 reports at an AIDS conference this week describe new combinations of AIDS drugs, all intended to improve on the spectacular success of the three-drug mixes credited with the steep drop in AIDS deaths over the past two years. The goal is to concoct new formulations that are more powerful, less toxic and easier to take. Ideally, these new mixes will offer a second chance to those who failed to do well on the original combinations. And they will require fewer pills, taken on less rigorous timetables, with fewer side effects. At the Fifth Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections, a meeting this week of the world's top AIDS investigators, U.S. officials announced that AIDS deaths dropped by nearly half during the first six months of 1997. They said the reason was largely the use of the so-called AIDS cocktail, which is a combination of pills consisting of a newer medicine called a protease inhibitor and two older ones called nucleoside analogues. Despite this surprising turnaround in the war on AIDS, there is no suggestion the virus is licked. Some people with AIDS cannot take the drugs or don't respond. In others, the virus grows impervious to the medicines after first seeming to succumb. And experts worry that many more are enjoying a sort of honeymoon, after which the virus will someday reappear with the upper hand. "We've made progress, but the progress is not complete. Not everyone is helped by the new therapies," said Dr. Douglas Richman of the University of California at San Diego. "Potency, tolerability and ease of use are the real goals." A few new AIDS drugs are nearing the end of human testing and will be submitted soon to the Food and Drug Administration for approval. Many more are in the test tube stage of development, and no one knows if they will pan out. Taken diligently, the AIDS drugs often reduce levels of virus so low they cannot be detected in the bloodstream. But the side effects can include high cholesterol, diabetes, kidney stones, intestinal upset, rash and headaches. And missing even a few doses allows the virus to develop mutations and come roaring back, impervious to the drugs. Experts say this is the most common reason treatment fails: Patients simply cannot stick to regimens that require downing four or five pills at once, three times a day. "The goal is to get that down to twice a day and to get the number of pills down substantially, too," said Dr. Emilio Emini of Merck & Co. Eleven AIDS drugs are now on the market, and they fall into three categories -- the protease inhibitors, such as Merck's Crixivan and Agouron Pharmaceutical's Viracept; the nucleoside analogues, a category that includes the older AIDS drugs, such as AZT and 3TC; and the non-nucleoside analogues, which like the nucleoside analogues block viral production of an essential protein called reverse transcriptase. Among other new developments: DuPont Merck Pharmaceutical Co. plans to seek approval in the second quarter of this year for Sustiva, or efavirenz, a powerful new non-nucleoside analogue. Eight reports on the drug were presented at the meeting, including one showing that a two-drug combination with the protease inhibitor Crixivan kept virus levels below detection for 90 percent of patients after one year. Protease inhibitors may not be an essential ingredient of the cocktail. Studies of abacavir, Glaxo Wellcome's experimental nucleoside analogue, suggest it may be combined with two older medicines in the same category to suppress HIV. This could be an option for those whose virus has grown resistant to protease inhibitors. Several studies presented looked at four-, five- and even six-drug combinations. The most common of these approaches tests the idea of giving two protease inhibitors along with two older drugs in an attempt to knock the virus down more forcefully from the start.