HIV-ACE (Anti Capsid assembly & Envelope
incorporation) is a research project funded and supported by the European
Commission under the Health collaborative programme of the 7th Framework
Programme (FP7).
It is a drug
discovery project whose objective is to develop innovative Early Drug
Candidates active against HIV with well-characterised antiviral activity and
low toxicity profile.
THE CONTEXT
The AIDS epidemics remains one of
the major life threatening disease and public health challenge the world is
facing today: “With 65 million people infected to date, of which nearly 25 million are
already dead, and with the vast majority of the more than 33 million people
living with HIV being unaware of their status, AIDS is among the greatest of
development and security issues facing the world today.”(The 2007
UNAIDS Report on the Global AIDS Epidemics)
According
to current scientific judgement, there are no prospects for the discovery of a
preventive vaccine against HIV in the short or medium-term. Therefore,
prevention and antiviral therapy remain the only available options to prevent
the spread of HIV and combat the disease. Although AIDS still remains lethal
when reaching the advanced immunodeficiency stage, combinations of the
currently available anti-viral drugs within Highly Active Anti-Retroviral
Therapy (HAART) has transformed the course of HIV infection into a chronic
disease, thereby significantly extending life-expectancy and improving the
quality of life to infected individuals.
Nevertheless,
despite this efficiency, HAART faces three major limitations: viral resistance,
viral persistence (since the virus is not eliminated by the treatment), and
drug toxicity, an issue particularly important for long–term and life-long
therapy. It is estimated that at least 6% of treated patients face complete
therapeutic failure due to multi drug-resistant viruses. Resistant viruses are
spreading in the population of HIV-infected patients and the increasing number
of patients initially infected by drug resistant viruses is a major concern.
