EVMS receives $100 million grant for HIV research

NORFOLK

Eastern Virginia Medical School has landed the largest grant in its history - $100 million - for researchers to develop a product to prevent the transmission of the virus that causes AIDS.

The Norfolk medical school was scheduled to announce the news today and says the federal grant will further two decades of study of microbicides, in forms such as topical gels, creams, tablets, films or oral pills, that would block HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.

Microbicides are a particularly important prevention tool for women, who account for one-half of people with HIV across the globe. Women could become less reliant on their partners' condom use.

"It's an extraordinary grant," said Dr. Gustavo Doncel, pre-clinical director for the research project. "Our main goal with the grant is to improve reproductive health in developing countries."

An estimated 33 million people worldwide were living with HIV in 2007. In some developing countries, the rates among women are much higher than men, which highlights the need for a prevention strategy that women can control.

The grant was awarded by the U.S. Agency for International Development to the EVMS program CONRAD. The same federal agency funded the 1986 creation of the program, formerly known as Contraceptive Research and Development.

CONRAD's main office is in Arlington, and its 50 researchers and employees are divided among that office, EVMS in Norfolk, and two work sites in Atlanta and West Chester, Pa.

CONRAD researchers have been working on microbicides for 20 years, Doncel said, and are focusing on several promising candidates, including one called "tenofovir gel" that is in clinical trials in South Africa.

Most of the safety and pharmaceutical studies of the microbicides have been done in the United States, but clinical tests regarding transmission of HIV must be done in countries where the incidence of the virus is higher, such as South Africa and India.

The emphasis is on compounds called "anti-retrovirals" that interfere with the process that allows HIV to replicate. Those compounds have proved effective in treating HIV infections, and now researchers are trying to find a way to use the compounds to prevent the transmission of the virus.

CONRAD's research also includes combination products that would not only protect against HIV but against other sexually transmitted diseases and prevent unwanted pregnancies.

Researchers also are trying to develop products that will work over longer periods of time, rather than with an application before sex, Doncel said.

Henry Gabelnick, executive director of CONRAD, said the division has received some $400 million in grants over the years for its work. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has supplied CONRAD with a number of grants; the most recent one was $28.5 million given in November.

Development of such products takes decades of trial and error, Doncel said. He said some substances CONRAD and other researchers have brought to clinical stages have proved ineffective, but each clinical trial, each failure, teaches lessons about how to refine the product to make it effective.

There's currently no microbicide on the market, and Doncel said he expected it would take another 10 years for that to happen.

It's always difficult to predict how long a product will take to move from lab to marketplace, Gabelnick said.

"That's always very elusive," he said. "We're always thinking something is around the corner."

Elizabeth Simpson, (757) 446-2635, elizabeth.simpson@pilotonline.com