Like last year's discovery of the gag cleavage site mutation for the protease inhibitors (which this year investigators from Virco reported to be found in up to 55% protease resistant clinical isolates), this year saw several papers reporting a 2-3…
Geneva "New Agents" Sessions Betray Dearth of Interest in Imaginative (or Costly) Drug Development Everything new is old again What is becoming clearer and clearer as these national and international meetings accumulate post-Vancouver is the need for new antiretroviral therapies…
Crypto Treatment Hopes Dashed as Sloppy, Divisive Unimed Fails to Provide Clean Data -- or Proof of Efficacy Unimed's ugly ultimatum On May 6th, the FDA’s Antiviral Drugs Advisory Committee met to consider an application for approval of Unimed Pharmaceuticals’…
Jubilation, and Skepticism, Greet Announcement of First Phase III Trial of an AIDS Vaccine Watershed -- or Waterworld? This June, the FDA gave the go-ahead to VaxGen, Inc., a subsidiary of Genentech, the biotechnology firm, to conduct the first phase…
Veteran Uptown Metabolic Trouble Shooter Argues Crix Belly, Buffalo Hump Are Not What They Seem The RU-486 fix As part of TAG's new monthly meeting format (first Tuesday of each month at the Michael Callen/Audrey Lourde Community Health Center, 356…
Mutinous Rumblings of Pill Popping Public Prompts Drug Outfits' Focus on User-Friendly Dosing Schemes IC50 be damned? Flying back from Vancouver (coach) nearly 2 years ago to the day, Pulitzer prize winning journalist Laurie Garrett -- after an understandable rant…
Congress Asks Watchdog Agency to Report on NIH's Allocation of Scarce Research Dollars Funding "frighteningly inadequate" In the face of criticism that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has unfairly favored certain diseases -- particularly AIDS -- in its yearly…
Joint TAG-AmFAR Scientific Think Tank Assembles Eradication Experts for Marathon Brainstorming Session Tissue samples could be key The Treatment Action Group and the American Foundation for AIDS Research held a groundbreaking scientific workshop 2/27-3/1 on clearing lingering reservoirs of HIV…
TAG Policy Director and Recent McArthur Fellow Warns Against Premature Declarations of Victory Mark Harrington, propelled further into the limelight by his recent selection as a recipient of a McArthur ‘genius’ award, has been out on the lecture circuit of…
U.S. and French Investigators Alike Are 'Shocked, shocked' to Learn of Maintenance Protocol's Failure Might the Brits get it right? First it was kidney stones. Blood in the urine. Hyperbilirubinemia. Yellowed whites of the eyes. An unquantifiable array of quality-of-life…