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Research Highlights
AIDS researcher wins VA’s Middleton Award
Taken from the Veterans Health Administration Highlights dated December 6, 2002
Dr. Douglas D. Richman, a virologist at the VA San Diego Healthcare System whose research on HIV and AIDS has helped guide treatment for millions of patients worldwide, will receive the 2002 Middleton Award, VA’s highest honor for biomedical investigators.
Richman, director of the Research Center for AIDS and HIV Infection at the San Diego VA and the Center for AIDS Research at the University of California, San Diego, is most noted for his studies of zidovudine, or azidothymidine (AZT), the first drug approved in the United States to treat HIV. He and colleagues established the effectiveness of the drug in clinical trials in the late 1980s. Later studies by Richman revealed the emergence of AZT-resistant strains of HIV. This led to the development in the 1990s of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART), in which AZT is taken in combination with other antiretroviral drugs to boost its effectiveness.
Today, Richman continues to play a major role in setting the national agenda for AIDS research and care. Recent research by Richman showed that more than three-quarters of HIV patients in the United States with a measurable viral load carry strains of the virus that are resistant to drug therapy.
The study underscored the need for drug resistance testing, which helps identify which medications will be effective for a patient. Richman has also shown that HAART does not completely eradicate HIV, but leaves small reservoirs of HIV in immune cells—even when blood tests show no trace of the virus.
Amid these findings, Richman is in the forefront of efforts to develop a new generation of HIV drugs to overcome the problems associated with HAART. His work may be of particular importance in the development of an AIDS vaccine.
Richman, author of more than 400 articles in the medical literature, serves on the editorial board of 15 journals and is editor-in-chief of Topics in HIV Medicine and AIDS Therapy. He is an advisor to the Food and Drug Administration and the World Health Organization, and serves on the Vaccine Research Committee of the AIDS Clinical Trials Group, a project of the National Institutes of Health. Richman is also a member of the Executive Committee on HIV for VA’s Quality Enhancement Research Initiative (QUERI).
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