• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

HIV Drug That Is “Closest Thing” We Have To A Vaccine Could Be Made 1,000 Times Cheaper

July 23, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

A breakthrough HIV drug, touted as the “closest thing we have to a vaccine”, could be produced for 1,000 times less than its current cost, according to new research. Right now, a full first-year course of the treatment costs an eye-watering $42,250 per patient, but one analysis suggests that could be slashed to just $40.

Advertisement

Developing a vaccine for HIV has long been a top priority in infectious disease research, but it’s proven difficult. While the ultimate preventative remains just out of reach, the advent of PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis) has provided a new way for people to protect themselves, and treatment for the infection has progressed tremendously in recent decades.

Perhaps most notably of all, we now know that when a HIV-positive person’s viral load becomes undetectable, thanks to antiretroviral drugs, they can no longer pass the infection on to others.



The drive for new and improved HIV treatments aims to help as many people as possible achieve this undetectable status. An exciting recent breakthrough was the approval of lenacapavir, marketed as Sunlenca by US pharma company Gilead Sciences, Inc. Administered as an injection, the treatment only needs to be repeated every six months, a far cry from the daily cocktail of pills that many HIV-positive people will be familiar with.

And it works. Lenacapavir is currently approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a treatment in cases where other HIV drugs have failed or are unsuitable, but recent trials are also showing its promise as a potential alternative to PrEP.

Advertisement

“You’ve got an injection somebody could have every six months and not get HIV. That’s as close as we’ve ever been to an HIV vaccine,” Dr Andrew Hill of the University of Liverpool told The Guardian.

A clinical trial focusing on historically underrepresented groups in HIV research – cisgender women and injectable drug users – was announced earlier this year, and in the meantime, the results of a trial in 5,000 people in Uganda and South Africa were just reported by Gilead. As one of the principal investigators, Dr Linda-Gail Bekker, said in an interview for The Conversation, “There was 100 percent efficacy.”

Six-monthly lenacapavir injections outperformed two currently approved forms of PrEP in the young women included in the trial, without the challenges that can come with having to take a pill every day.

“For a young woman who struggles to get to an appointment at a clinic in a town or who can’t keep pills without facing stigma or violence,” Dr Bekker explained, “an injection just twice a year is the option that could keep her free of HIV.”

Advertisement

The downside to all this? It’s expensive. The first year of lenacapavir treatment currently costs in excess of $42,000 per patient. Some scientists and campaigners are now saying that it doesn’t have to be this way.

According to research conducted by Dr Hill and colleagues and presented at a recent conference, the minimum price for a mass-produced generic version of lenacapavir, following the same ingredients and manufacturing process, would be $40 per patient, based on a profit of 30 percent and 10 million annual users. In reality, they suggest that up to 60 million people a year would need to take the drug to have a marked impact on HIV spread.

The research team and campaigners are calling for Gilead to allow generic licensing in low- and middle-income countries, where the vast majority of new HIV infections arise, through a UN-backed project called the Medicines Patent Pool, which has already signed agreements with the patent holders of 13 HIV drugs.

In a statement released after the results of the Uganda and South Africa trial were revealed, Gilead stressed that the use of lenacapavir to prevent HIV was still investigational, but that they were “prioritizing speed to enable the most efficient path for the regulatory approval of twice-yearly lenacapavir for PrEP in countries that account for most of the global disease burden.”

Advertisement

“You have a miracle tool that could transform access for gay men, trans people, sex workers, for young women in Africa who could be freed from the stigma and fear of being attacked just for being seen swallowing tablets,” said UNAIDS executive director Winnie Byanyima in a direct plea to Gilead at the conference, as reported by Pharmaceutical Technology.

“Right now, Gilead, lenacapavir is priced for rich countries – this inequality never served us well in HIV response.”

The study was presented at the 25th International Aids Conference.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Bolivian president calls for global debt relief for poor countries
  2. Five Seasons Ventures pulls in €180M fund to tackle human health and climate via FoodTech
  3. Humanity’s Journey To A Metal-Rich Asteroid Launches Today. Here’s How To Watch
  4. Ancient DNA Reveals People Caught Leprosy From Adorable Woodland Critters In Medieval England

Source Link: HIV Drug That Is “Closest Thing” We Have To A Vaccine Could Be Made 1,000 Times Cheaper

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • Hib: The Deadliest Disease You Might Never Have Heard Of (Because Vaccines Are Awesome)
  • The Legend Of Ol’ Rip The Horned Toad Who Reportedly Survived 31 Years Of Hibernation And Met President Coolidge
  • Newly Discovered “Reset Button” Lets Mathematicians Undo Any Rotation
  • Bear-Sized Snow Sloths? Meet Megalonyx, The Ice Age Giants That Lived Until 13,000 Years Ago
  • Why Can’t Mormons Drink Coffee?
  • In 1997, A Zoo Chimp Amazed Scientists By Gathering Rocks To Throw At Visitors
  • YouTuber Films Laser Light At 2 Billion Frames Per Second In His Garage
  • The Time To Watch Comet Lemmon Is Now
  • Ig Nobel-Winning “Butt-Breathing” Technique Moves One Step Closer To Saving Lives
  • What Is The Oldest Religion In The World?
  • This Mini Dragon Is One Of The World’s Rarest Amphibians With Just 150 Individuals Living In One Lake
  • “Alien Mothership” Hypothesis About To Have Key Test As Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS Hits Solar Conjunction And Perihelion
  • 18 Of These Rare Mammals Live In The Wild. Have We Reached A Turning Point In Their Return To The US?
  • How Comet 2P/Encke Caused “Halloween Fireballs” To Rain Down On The Earth
  • US Flight Potentially Hit By Space Debris – What Are The Chances That The Claim Is Correct?
  • Hormone Therapy For Trans Women Shifts Dozens Of Proteins To Align With Their Gender Identity
  • People Are Not Reacting Well After Learning How Cranberries Are Grown
  • The World’s Newest Great Ape Is Also Its Rarest, With Fewer Than 800 Left In The Wild
  • IFLScience We Have Questions: Can Burying Scientists Alive In The Snow Help Us Protect Polar Bears?
  • Scientists Perplexed By 407-Million-Year-Old Fossilized Plant That Doesn’t Follow The Fibonacci Sequence
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version