Our Science – HIVDRP Website

HIV Drug Resistance Program

In addition to the information presented below, the HIVDRP has an alternative website that can provide you with more detail about their work.

Research

The application of therapies using combinations of antiviral drugs has shown that virus growth in infected people can be brought to a halt and, in many individuals, provide considerable and long-lasting improvement in their condition. These therapies have helped large numbers of people live relatively normal lives despite their HIV infection. Most important, the therapies prove the concept that antiviral drugs can give long-term relief to patients with HIV infection, but fall far short of providing a long-term solution.

The problem facing all the strategies is the development of resistance in the virus due to the appearance of specific mutations. In an effort to avoid resistance, drugs have to be given at high--somewhat toxic--doses, in expensive combinations, and on exacting and difficult-to-follow schedules. Even then, the therapy often fails and resistant virus appears. There is, therefore, a desperate need to understand how the virus develops resistance to drugs and to use this understanding to develop more effective strategies for treating HIV infection.

This program represents a focused basic science research effort that addresses this need and builds on the existing strength of HIV and retrovirus research within the National Cancer Institute.

The HIV Drug Resistance Program comprises two sections:
the Retroviral Replication Laboratory and the Host-Virus Interaction Branch.
Click on the links below to learn more about the investigators within each group.

Retroviral Replication Laboratory
Stephen H. Hughes, PhD
David Derse, PhD
Eric O. Freed, PhD
Wei-Shu Hu, PhD
Vineet N. KewalRamani, PhD
Stuart F.J. Le Grice PhD
Vinay K. Pathak, PhD
Alan Rein, PhD

Host-Virus Interaction Branch
Frank Maldarelli, MD, PhD
Sarah Palmer, PhD

This page was last updated on 1/31/2008.