4th International AIDS Conference Stockholm, Sweden. — June 12-16, 1988

Int Conf AIDS. 1988 Jun 12-16;4:1.108 (abstract no. PL10)

Bo Öberg
Astra Alab AB, Antiviral Therapy, Södertälje, Sweden

An ongoing multiplication of HIV in an infected person seems to be the cause of the development of AIDS. Fortunately, HIV is both a complicated and an increasingly well understood virus and thus offers several good targets for therapy. Targets which have been identified today include the interaction between HIV and T4 receptors, the viral enzymes reverse transcriptase, RNase H, endonuclease, protease, the regulatory proteins tat, sor, art, 3'orf as well as the structural HIV proteins.

Other targets are glycosylation of viral proteins, translation frameshift and antisense mRNA. The clinical efficacy of AZT shows that inhibitors of the reverse transcriptase can be used for AIDS therapy. The detailed knowledge of HIV reverse transcriptase and its function makes it the main target in the near,future and several inhibitors have been found and will be evaluated clinically. It is likely that useful drugs interacting with the other HIV enzymes, especially the protease, can be developed based on present knowledge of their function. The development of drugs acting on HIV regulatory proteins, structural proteins or directly on the viral genome will have to rely on serendipity and more basic knowledge. Blocking HIV multiplication will probably not eliminate the virus because of integration into cellular genes. Thus, lifelong treatment will be necessary and requires drugs with low toxicity. Combinations of drugs with antiviral activity as well as immunomodulators are likely future developments. A permanent cure remains a remote possibility.

880612
PL10

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