Immense progress has been made in the treatment of HIV/AIDS since the advent of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) in 1997. With appropriate and timely treatment most HIV-infected patients are able to lead active and fulfilled lives for many years.
However, there is still no vaccine or cure for HIV infection and people living with the virus face many challenges. Short- and long-term toxicity issues, dosing complexity and resistance to existing drugs and/or entire drug classes continue to present significant challenges to patients and healthcare providers alike. Consequently, at ViiV Healthcare we are investing significantly in research and development that will allow for the introduction of new and improved classes of HIV drugs which will be critical for the effective management of HIV infection and thus improve the quality of life of those affected by HIV/AIDS in the coming decades.
HIV and AIDS can affect all age groups and cross-sections of the population, so ViiV Healthcare is committed to address the needs of all people living with HIV, including those who have been overlooked by more conventional approaches. We strive to identify their needs and develop solutions for them. One example is our support for the development of new HIV/AIDS medicines for children – to this end we have set up a £10 million seed fund to support a range of public private partnerships for research and development of new antiretroviral medicines specifically for children.
Discover more about our commitment to new medicines for all people with HIV and our current pipeline.
Drug discovery and clinical trials
At ViiV Healthcare, we are committed to ensuring that our innovative R&D programme addresses the needs of those affected by HIV/AIDS around the world. We draw upon the expertise of not one but two HIV drug discovery units to fill our pipelines and we are structured to make new drugs available as quickly as possible. In addition, we also seek to license compounds discovered and developed by biotechnology companies external to GSK and Pfizer to further enhance our pipeline.
ViiV Healthcare supports research by its shareholder companies to develop promising HIV pipeline assets, which ViiV Healthcare may then choose to develop further and market. This unique approach combines the power, efficiencies and best practice from the GSK and Pfizer R&D groups, with our own technical expertise in developing HIV medicines. We believe that working this way will enable us to deliver a faster, more consistent flow of innovation to HIV-infected patients.
As ViiV Healthcare-sponsored trials are implemented by the GSK and Pfizer teams on behalf of ViiV Healthcare, the clinical trial results and study progress can be viewed at the individual company clinical study registries. These can be found by searching each of the databases by the name of the molecule or the therapy area:
The GSK Clinical Study Register can be found on http://www.gsk-clinicalstudyregister.com/
The equivalent data for Pfizer-sponsored studies can be found on: http://clinicalstudyresults.org/Clinicalstudyresults.org and Clinicaltrials.gov