New Treatments Pipeline
posted: 10/09/2010
If you want to know about all the future treatments, tests, and prevention for HIV, hepatitis, and TB, the Treatment Action Group (TAG) have produced a new guide. It deals with
- future HIV antiretroviral treatments
- future ways of diagnosing HIV
- future HIV antiretroviral treatments for babies, children and young people
- future immune-based therapies and preventive technologies - like vaccines and pre-exposure prophylaxis (which means treatment to prevent HIV infection)
- future hepatitis B treatments
- future hepatitis C treatments
- future diagnosis, treatments and vaccines for tuberculosis (TB)
It's not an easy booklet to read, but there are 150 pages of information about new HIV treatments in the development 'pipeline.' That is a lot of new developments that should continue to steadily improve the quality and length of life people with HIV can expect.
TAG 2010 Pipeline Report from i-BASE
Treatment Action Group (TAG)
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Treatments Update Session
posted: 15/09/2009
The latest news on HIV treatment will be given in a talk on Thursday 1 October at George House Trust. Simon Collins, one of the editors of i-Base, who produce many different HIV treatment information booklets, is giving an evening talk and questions and answers session. This Treatments Update session starts at 5pm and will finish at 7pm.
He will talk about the latest treatment news and choices, and answer any questions you may have about HIV treatment.
i-Base answer lots of questions about HIV all the time - they have section of people's questions and their answers on their website. You can ask your own questions online there.
i-Base also have a telephone Treatment Phoneline 0808 800 6013 from Monday - Wednesday 12-4pm. Calls to 0808 numbers are free from a BT landline. Other networks and mobiles may charge.
All their treatment booklets are listed here.
This talk is open to people living with HIV who are known to George House Trust.
Any questions about this event, please email Lynda or call her on 0161 274 4499.
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HIV Treatment Training
posted: 30/04/2009
If you want to understand the details of HIV treatments, or if you are interested in supporting people with treatment concerns, new training packs are available.
Online, free from i-Base, there is Treatment Training for Advocates.
And available from NAM is their printed authoritative 2009 issue of HIV Treatments Training Pack.
Here's what you will find in I-Base's online training manual
1 Immune system and CD4 count
2 Virology, HIV and viral load
3 Introduction to anti-retrovirals (ARVs)
4 Side effects of ARVs
5 Opportunistic infections and coinfections
6 HIV and pregnancy
7 Drug users and HIV
8 Clinical trials and research
- Full section index
- Glossary
- PDFs and PowerPoints
Learning resources included: WHO classification system for HIV infection, AIDS-defining infections for CDC clinical categories, Opportunistic infections by disease type, ARV drugs and doses,TB drugs, PowerPoint slide sets, Worksheets, Related websites, Glossary, PDF versions.
Questions
The i-Base online Training Manual is here
NAM's HIV Treatments Training Pack
NAM's HIV Treatments Training Pack is not for the everyday person - it's designed for professionals and is only printed, and it is priced at £150 - although you can use a discount code.
This new resource from NAM will enable you to plan and deliver your own HIV training sessions. The training pack is built up of twelve flexible modules that can be broken down into short sessions or added together for longer courses. The pack is designed so that you can adapt the sessions to best suit your needs and those of your audience.
This training pack includes:
- USB pen storing powerpoint slides
- in-depth speakers’ discussion guides
- handouts for course participants
- awareness-raising games and exercises
The training pack can be used for both group work and in one-to-one sessions. Suitable for training audiences with varying knowledge levels including health professionals, general staff, volunteers and people personally affected by HIV- the HIV Treatments Training Pack is your ideal guide.
The twelve learning modules are:
- HIV treatments training
- Introduction to HIV and AIDS
- The immune system and HIV
- Medical monitoring
- Anti-HIV therapy
- HIV and pregnancy
- Treatments for children
- Living with HIV
- HIV co-infections
- UK & global statistics
- Clinical trials
- Learning more about HIV
£150.00
NAM's Manual
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Pool HIV Patents
posted: 17/04/2009
The UK Minister for International Development has challenged drug companies to help the developing world by giving up their patent rights to compounds that could be used in cures for neglected diseases and medicines for children with HIV.
Ivan Lewis, the minister for international development, said it was reasonable to expect the drug giants to do more. "Now is the time for industry to step up to the mark," he said. We're all concerned about the economic circumstances we're living in and the danger that that will push an increasing number of people into poverty," he added. "Challenging pharma to do their bit ... is entirely legitimate."
Pool Patents
Lewis will meet executives of leading drug companies to ask them to join two patent pools. He wants to know whether they will respond to the invitation of GlaxoSmithKline, which a few weeks ago said it would put all relevant patents into a pool designed to facilitate research into drugs for neglected diseases, and invited other companies to do the same.
Lewis will also ask whether they will support a patent pool for HIV medicines being designed by Unitaid, an international organisation launched by France, Brazil, Chile, Norway and the UK that buys medicines for the developing world.
"There's never been a better time for other companies to make their position known," he said.
Faster child-friendly treatments
The minister also intends to press Unitaid to move faster. He will write to the agency "urging them to speed up their work specifically on the question of child-friendly HIV treatments".
New medicines for TB are among those needed as the global epidemic grows, fuelled by HIV and complicated by resistance to old drugs. On World TB Day, Lewis announced £18m research funding for the TB Alliance to develop a shorter course of treatment. The UK is making the grant against a background of concern that recession may cause donors to cut back on funding for poor countries.
Source
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Drug Firms Merge HIV Arms
posted: 17/04/2009
Glaxo-SmithKline (GSK) and Pfizer are to merge the HIV arms of both these international drug companies, in a move to better develop and market HIV drugs. This follows an announcement in February that GSK was going to reduce the prices of its drugs, including those for HIV, across the developing world.
Britain's biggest drugs company, GlaxoSmithKline, is to pool resources for treating HIV with its USA rival Pfizer, in a bid to reinvigorate financial returns from tackling the global epidemic.
GSK and Pfizer announced that they intend to create a new company, headquartered in London but as yet unnamed, to manage their HIV operations with initial working capital of £250m.
The lion's share of the business will be owned by GSK, which will take 85% to reflect its portfolio of big-selling HIV drugs such as Combivir and Kivexa. The other 15% will go to Pfizer, which will contribute potentially promising new treatments.
Delivering new drugs
GSK's chief executive, Andrew Witty, said the "clear focus" of the joint venture would be in delivering new drugs to build on what he described as the drugs industry's remarkable success in tackling HIV over the last two decades.
Witty recalled that as recently as 1990, it was extremely difficult to conduct clinical trials in HIV because people rarely lived long enough to complete studies. He said: "I think it's one of the finest performances of the pharmaceuticals industry to have transformed an incredibly frightening infectious disease into something more manageable."
The new company will have 11 drugs on the market and a further six in clinical development. It will have a market share of 19% and annual sales of £1.6bn.
Once the global leader in HIV drugs, GSK has slipped to second place behind a USA rival, Gilead, and has seen sales stutter. Revenue from GSK's HIV treatments fell by 5% to £1.5bn last year, while sales of the company's entire pharmaceuticals portfolio slipped 3% to £20.3bn. It has few new HIV drugs in the pipeline, but Pfizer has several.
Pfizer has a relatively newly launched HIV drug, Selzentry, and is working on several more in trials.
"Both companies are facing some pressures in the HIV area," said Damien Conover, an analyst at the Chicago research firm Morningstar. "Selzentry is not doing as well as it probably could if it had more resources behind it."
Cautious welcome
Charities supporting people living with HIV greeted the tie-up with cautious optimism. Sir Nick Partridge, chief executive of the Terrence Higgins Trust, said his organisation "welcomes any move which will strengthen HIV research and development and benefit people living with HIV".
Partridge said that 33 million people lived with HIV worldwide: "We need to be making constant advances to stay one step ahead of the virus."
The new company will be run by Dominique Limet, a former head of GSK's French operation who presently runs the group's personalised medicine strategy.
Under the arrangement, either GSK or Pfizer could be rewarded with a greater ownership stake depending on whose laboratories come up with promising treatments in the future.
GSK's chief executive Witty, who is sceptical about multimillion-dollar mergers among drugs firms, suggested that this tie-up could be an example of how collaboration could be made to work elsewhere in future. "It's not necessarily a template but it will apply elsewhere," he said. "This structure is a good example of the way we want to create value and generate efficiency in our business."
He pledged that the new company would adopt "enlightened mindsets" towards the pricing and availability of HIV drugs in sub-Saharan Africa and other developing countries.
Source
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