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World AIDS Day

World AIDS Day

December 1st marks World AIDS Day.  Started in 1988, it is an opportunity for people worldwide to raise awareness, to unite and show support for those living with HIV, and to commemorate those who have died from an AIDS-related illness.1 In 2022, there was an estimated 39 million people worldwide living with HIV and roughly 1.3 million new cases in that same year.  An estimated 40.4 million have died of AIDS-related illnesses since the start of the AIDS pandemic in 1981.  While certainly far from over, new infections and deaths have been declining as treatment options become available and increased preventative measures are taken due to raised awareness.2

The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is the virus responsible for AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome).  It is hard to control, highly infectious, and is often lethal.  Peptide inhibitors offer treatment promise with several in clinical development and most often target cell entry and binding.  Enfuvirtide (Fuzeon or T-20) is an approved peptide-based therapeutic used for HIV treatment and is a fusion inhibitor.3 In addition, there are peptide therapeutics available and in development for treating related illnesses and side effects of both HIV/AIDS and from first generation retroviral treatments.  Tesamorelin, for instance, is 44 amino acid human growth hormone-releasing factor (GRF) peptide used to treat HIV-associated lipodystrophy.    Octreotide, a somatostatin analogue, is another peptide used to treat side effects.4  

In peptide API manufacturing, the 2003 approval of enfuvirtide helped completely transform the supply chain in order to produce commercial quantities of up to metric tons of this API per year.  Large quantities of Fmoc-amino acids and solid-phase resins were required and led to an industry-wide improvement in quality and price of these building blocks.5

References

  1. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2023, November 27). World AIDS Day. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/worldaidsday/index.html
  2. UNAIDS. (2023, November 27). Global HIV & AIDS statistics – fact sheet. https://www.unaids.org/en/resources/fact-sheet
  3. Shi S, Nguyen PK, Cabral HJ, Diez-Barroso R, Derry PJ, Kanahara SM, Kumar VA. Development of peptide inhibitors of HIV transmission. Bioact Mater. 2016 Sep 16;1(2):109-121. doi: 10.1016/j.bioactmat.2016.09.004. PMID: 29744399; PMCID: PMC5883972.
  4. Romeu J, Miró JM, Sirera G, Mallolas J, Arnal J, Valls ME, Tortosa F, Clotet B, Foz M. Efficacy of octreotide in the management of chronic diarrhoea in AIDS. AIDS. 1991 Dec;5(12):1495-9. doi: 10.1097/00002030-199112000-00012. PMID: 1814331.
  5. Michael W. Pennington, Brant Zell, Chris J. Bai, Commercial manufacturing of current good manufacturing practice peptides spanning the gamut from neoantigen to commercial large-scale products, Medicine in Drug Discovery. 2021; (9): 100071, ISSN 2590-0986, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.medidd.2020.100071.

Additional Reading