A blog about the 16th International AIDS Conference, Toronto, Canada, August 13-18, 2006.
The Kaiser Family Foundation's web site has a video recording of the session I was at yesterday, entitled "Novel Targets for Drug Development."
The third speaker at the session was Dr. John Moore from Cornell University's Weill Medical College. He's studying the ability of various drugs, already in trials as anti-retrovirals, to act as microbicides. A microbicide is a chemical that can prevent or reduce HIV-1 transmission when applied at the site of entry to the body (the vagina or rectum), and is the prevention approach receiving the most lip service at this meeting thanks to Bill and Melinda Gates.
Dr. Moore prefaced his talk with the shocking statistic that in South Africa, 1 woman in 4 becomes infected with HIV-1 by age 22, emphasizing the need for a prevention strategy, such as microbicides, that young woman can take advantage of. He has promising results for various chemical compounds in primate and in vitro models.
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