LABORATORY SCHEDULE

Professor Charles E. McKenna
Department of Chemistry
Last updated September 5, 2003

All labs are in SGM 121

Week of September 9: New Trends in AIDS Research
Due date: Your lab date plus one week

    Historically, the first medication the FDA approved to combat HIV was AZT, initiating the class of Nucleoside Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitors (NRTI) in 1987. Several other NRTI’s have appeared in the clinic since. In 1995, the first example of a new class of HIV drug, saquinavir, a protease inhibitor, appeared. In 1996 nevirapine, the first Non-Nucleoside Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitor (NNRTI) entered the clinic.

    A significant number of new cases of HIV infection reported over the last few years have involved a virus resistant to available drugs. This has stimulated companies to develop new candidates for existing drug classes and to elaborate entirely new classes of drug. Current anti-HIV drugs target only two enzymes that the virus uses for its replication. However a number of drug candidates currently in clinical trials focus on different stages of viral replication and cell infection processes.

    In the table below is presented a list of drug candidates currently in various stages of clinical trial, and a list of potential drug classes. You are to select 5 of these drugs, one from each class (using the web to identify the class) (2 pts each), and to find the company developing the drug (2 pts each).

Drug classes

• NRTI
• NNRTI
• Protease inhibitor
• Fusion or entry inhibitor
• Integrase inhibitor
• Therapeutic vaccine

Drug Candidates

• Elvucitabine
• Calanolide A
• Capravirine
• Emtricitabine
• Amdoxovir
• DPC 083
• HIV-1 Immunogen
• Proleukin
• S-1360
• T-1249
• Tipranavir
• TMC 114
• TMC 125
• Fosamprenavir

(C) CE McKenna, Ph.D. USC, Chemistry Dept., 2003