HIV mutates quickly, rapidly rendering drugs ineffectual. The FDA granted accelerated approval for the anti-HIV medicine Prezista™ in June 2006 and has indicated its use in salvage therapy, a form of treatment given after an ailment does not respond to standard treatment. For the thousands of patients with multi-resistant strains of HIV, Prezista™ is proving a potent option in their fight against the disease.
Possessed of a novel molecular structure, Prezista™ is always co-administered with ribonavir, a protease inhibitor which slows the breakdown of the drug in the body, and other antiretroviral agents. They work together to minimize the risk of a patient developing resistance to the drugs.
Prezista™ is one of two second-generation protease inhibitors providing a major advance in drug resistance.
Prezista™ was developed at the University of Illinois at Chicago by Arun Ghosh, Ph.D. of the department of chemistry (now at Purdue University) with support and collaboration from the National Institutes of Health. In 1999, Prezista™ was licensed to Tibotec Therapeutics, a division of Ortho Biotech Products, L.P. It is expected that Prezista’s sales potential will be $781 million by 2010. The University of Illinois at Chicago stands to receive millions of dollars in royalties.
This story was originally published in 2008.
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