Virologic Awarded Research Grant for HIV Assay

A US$600,000 research grant from the U.S. National Institutes of Health has been awarded to ViroLogic, Inc. (S. San Francisco, CA) to develop new technology to measure HIV resistance to entry inhibitors and evaluate HIV vaccine candidates. The grant will be paid over two years.

The grant accelerates ViroLogic's efforts to develop a new drug resistance assay to measure HIV susceptibility to entry inhibitors, a promising class of investigational antiviral drugs. Entry inhibitors work differently from existing drugs by blocking the attachment of the virus with a human host cell before it can enter the cell. In recent studies, they have been shown effective against HIV strains that are resistant to currently available drugs, reverse transcriptase and protease inhibitors. One entry inhibitor candidate is already in phase III of clinical evaluation.

Virologic's new resistance assay is being developed to evaluate drugs that target every step of the virus entry process. In addition, by measuring how well HIV antibodies block infection, the new assay will provide a valuable tool to assess HIV vaccine candidates designed to promote antibodies that block HIV entry.

"The grant acknowledges the need for and potential utility of a rapid assay to evaluate drugs targeted at HIV entry,” said Bill Young, chairman and CEO of ViraLogic. "There are currently 17 entry inhibitors in development by 11 pharmaceutical companies and research institutions. For HIV vaccines, there are over 30 companies engaged in vaccine research, with at least nine already conducting clinical trials with new candidates.”




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