Gilead Sciences and Tibotec Pharmaceuticals have finalized an agreement to develop a new once-daily antiretroviral pill that combines the protease inhibitor Prezista with Emtriva, the investigational booster cobicistat, and an investigational new form of Viread called GS 7340.

GS 7340 is expected to be safer and more effective than the current version of Viread (tenofovir). Gilead has stated that GS 7340 will enter Phase 2 clinical trials early next year.

“This is the first time we are developing…

Merck To Collaborate With The Vaccine And Gene Therapy Institute On HIV Latency Research – U.S. pharmaceutical company Merck has entered into a three-year agreement with the Vaccine and Gene Therapy Institute of Florida to collaborate on research into HIV latency. Latent HIV is a dormant form of HIV that is not actively replicating and therefore is not eliminated by antiretroviral drugs. The research is part of an effort toward finding a cure for HIV and will focus on methods…

Isentress Prescribing Information Updated To Warn Of Severe Rash – The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently announced that the prescribing information for Isentress (raltegravir) has been updated to include a warning about the risk of a severe, potentially life-threatening rash. According to the FDA, patients taking Isentress should immediately contact their physician if they develop a rash. Physicians should advise patients to immediately stop taking Isentress if they develop a rash and have one or more…

Interim results from a Phase 2 clinical trial show that 74 percent of HIV-positive participants taking Incivek, in combination with peginterferon-alfa and ribavirin, had undetectable hepatitis C virus levels after 24 weeks of treatment, compared to 55 percent of participants taking peginterferon-alfa and ribavirin alone.

The response rate is similar to that reported last month for Victrelis (boceprevir) in a Phase 2 clinical trial in people with HIV (see related AIDS Beacon news).

“As HIV treatments have…

Results from a recent Swiss study indicate that as people with HIV get older, additional diseases such as diabetes, heart attacks, and cancer become increasingly common in this population.

The study authors also said that a comparison of their results with studies of HIV-negative, older adults suggests that people with HIV have around a three- to four-fold higher risk for cancer and heart attacks and a five-fold higher risk for diabetes than people of the same age without HIV.

Based…