$VRAL’s Montagnier on HIV/AIDS
October 7th, 2009 at 5:27 am Posted by
$VRAL‘s very own Nobel Prize winner and leading advisory board member Dr. Luc Montagnier was in the news yesterday giving his input on the recent developments in the HIV/AIDS research market.
Dr. Luc Montagnier is featured in the Bloomberg article because he’s credited with the discovery of the HIV virus and his expert opinion is valued by the scientific and medical communities. Montagnier urges that the same approach used in the mildly successful Thailand trial should be tested in South Africa.
South Africa has the largest population of infected individuals in the world and is said to be responsible for the strain of the HIV virus present in more than 50% of the world’s cases. Montagnier wants trials to be conducted in South Africa because he believes if a treatment were to work there, “it would work everywhere.”
Dr. Montagnier considers every initiative working towards fighting AIDS as being good for humankind and that AIDS can be destroyed without a preventative vaccine. When teaching the CollegeStock Community about the fight against HIV/AIDS, The Dean has suggested that a treatment method that combines different types of therapies could be more effective in getting rid of the virus.
The 2008 Nobel Prize winner in $VRAL‘s corner also claimed that too much money has been spent on searching for a vaccine instead of putting funding into prevention and treatment. The Dean believes this could potentially rally support for $VRAL because their VGV-1 injectable drug is a treatment and $VRAL has already assembled a team for research and trials in Africa.
Another article from Bloomberg references ScienceInsider in saying that the results of the Thailand trial are not significant enough because the actual outcome was less significant than the originally 30% effectiveness.
Both reports come on the same day that one of Pfizer’s (NYSE: PFE) HIV drugs is deemed safe enough for use. But upon further reading of the article, you’ll find that $PFE‘s Selzentry would be used to treat a specific strain of the HIV virus and, like Montagnier and the Thailand trial advocate, this drug would also need to be used in conjunction with antiretroviral drugs. Even the drug developer themselves claimed that more treatment options are needed to fight HIV/AIDS int he world.
The Dean believes this is the reason that 100 antiretroviral drugs are currently approved by the FDA—29 are new products and 71 are generic copes of previously authorized products in the United States. 22 of these are “combinations of regimens that have not previously been authorized” for use in the United States. Furthermore, these new drugs cannot be marketed in the United States because of “existing patents and marketing exclusivity.”
A plea from Cardinal Turkson in Ghana calling for cheaper medications for HIV/AIDS also highlights the need and huge market for this deadly disease that leaves nearly 35 million people around the world wondering how they will survive.
Students have until October 10th to become eligible for The Dean’s first ever Scholarship Fund contest. To be eligible, you MUST be an Honors Student. With The Dean giving away $5,000 to one top-performing Honors Students every quarter, $9.87/month to register for Honors Class is the ONLY way to get to the head of the class.
