GSK Tries to Control HIV With Monthly Injections

In an effort to improve adherence to HIV drugs and lower their impact on the liver, major drugmakers have teamed up to try and create a monthly antiretroviral injection that is safer and more convenient than daily pills. Clinical trials by GlaxoSmithKline and Johnson & Johnson have yielded positive initial results.

"It's certainly something that people have great interest in," Bill Spreen, the Glaxo scientist who's responsible for developing GSK744, told Bloomberg News. "There's going to be a sub-population of patients who select this."

People once took as many as 30 pills a day in a toxic cocktail to treat HIV. It is now treated with a daily pill such as Atripla. But the drugs must be taken for life and can cause long-term damage to the liver, pushing drugmakers to look for even safer and less burdensome therapy. Glaxo and J&J are now testing the injectable combination, the most advanced of its kind, in people with HIV to see whether it can keep the virus in check.

In a trial among 40 healthy, HIV-negative volunteers of Glaxo's GSK744 and J&J's TMC278, monthly injections sustained drug levels above a predetermined threshold considered necessary to control HIV, both during the trial and for four months after the last shot. GlaxoSmithKline and Johnson & Johnson are examining the therapies in combination to determine if they can control viral levels in HIV-infected individuals. The results were presented at the International AIDS Society's meeting in Kuala Lumpur in July.

A survey of 400 HIV-infected patients found 84 percent said they would probably or definitely try monthly injectable therapy, according to a study published in the journal Nanomedicine in April.

Quarterly Shots Make Help Prevent HIV Infection

Doctors are discovering ways to use injections to prevent HIV, as well. Quarterly shots of Gilead's Truvada pill can preemptively reduce high-risk individual's chances of getting HIV. Although this is available in pill form, the inconvenience and side effects prevent many from using it.

The shot, called GSK744, is being developed by ViiV Healthcare, a joint venture between Glaxo, Pfizer Inc. (PFE) and Osaka, Japan-based Shionogi & Co. It is related to dolutegravir, which may win U.S. regulatory approval by August and earn Glaxo more than $1 billion in sales by 2018.

People in the trial took GSK744 in tablet form once a day for two weeks, then stopped treatment for a week before receiving one of three different combinations of the injections once a month for four months. A fourth group received two injections three months apart.