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New AIDS drug developed
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BELGIAN researchers have developed experimental AIDS drugs designed specifically to work against strains of HIV that resist existing medicines.
Researchers from Tibotec Group NV, a small Belgian company, reported at an ongoing AIDS Conference in Chicago that they are working on two sets of drugs -- one of which already is being tested in people, which in laboratory studies have countered almost every resistant form of HIV, the AIDS virus, that has emerged in recent years.
The first human trials of the drug, TMC-20, showed it is safe and potent. Another version of the drug, TMC-125, is expected to enter patient testing soon.
The Tibotec researchers said that in lab tests they have been able to create new mutant forms of the virus that may eventually be resistant to the new drugs. "But, at present, it looks to us that the resistance is so hard for the virus to develop that it may take years for it to occur, or it may not occur at all," said Dr Pauwels, who led the study.
Scott Hammer, an AIDS-research physician at Columbia University said the new drugs from Tibotec represent a clear advance in AIDS-drug discovery.
(Xinhua)
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