By Chioma Umeha
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is
investing as much as 44 billion naira, an equivalent of $140 million to support
development of a tiny implantable drug pump it believes could help prevent
people in sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere from becoming infected with HIV, the
virus that causes AIDS.
The matchstick-size pump is being developed by
Intarcia Therapeutics Inc., a closely held Boston biotechnology company, according
to FOX News Health. It can hold six or 12 months’ supply of medicine and is
designed to deliver microdoses continuously to patients, ensuring they stay on
the treatment.
The new investment which Intarcia announced
weekend, comes amid a flurry of fresh efforts to develop HIV prevention
strategies.
Last week, the National Institute of Allergy and
Infectious Diseases announced a global 4,500-patient clinical trial to test
whether injections every eight weeks of an experimental HIV drug, cabotegravir,
from U.K.-based ViiV Healthcare is effective in preventing HIV infection. Last
month, the first efficacy study of an HIV vaccine in seven years was begun in
South Africa.
This is “one of the most exciting years ever in
HIV prevention,” said Mitchell Warren, executive director of AVAC, a global HIV
advocacy organization supported by the Gates Foundation.
