Celsentri - Maraviroc

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Pfizer's new treatment Celsentri (maraviroc) blocks HIV's entry to immune system cells - the first new oral class of HIV/Aids treatment in more than a decade.


Although it is not a cure, it can help patients who have not responded to other available HIV drugs. A cocktail of three drugs collectively called HAART (highly active anti-retroviral therapy) has dramatically improved the life expectancy of patients with HIV, but resistance to these drugs is a problem.

Maraviroc was approved in the US in August, where it is marketed under the name of Selzentry.

It is taken in combination with other anti-retroviral drugs, but works in an entirely new way.
It blocks a microscopic doorway - the CCR5 receptor - which HIV uses to enter and infect human cells called CD4-T-cells.
All other currently available oral HIV medicines work on the HIV virus once it has entered the immune cells.

Trials show that in suitable patients - those infected with only CCR5-tropic HIV-1 - it can help reduce the levels of virus circulating in the blood stream and increase the numbers of immune CD4 cells.
Between 50 and 78% of people with HIV have this strain.
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Isentress / Raltegravir

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New HIV Drug Merits Quick Approval
The Associated Press

(Washington) An experimental HIV drug from Merck & Co. Inc. should be quickly approved for use by patients running out of treatment options, federal advisers recommended Wednesday.

The panel of outside experts agreed unanimously that available data support accelerated approval of Isentress, also known as raltegravir, by the Food and Drug Administration.

If approved, Isentress would be the first in a new class of anti-retroviral drugs called integrase inhibitors.

The Merck drug targets integrase, one of three enzymes used by the virus to replicate and infect cells. The FDA previously has approved drugs that target the two other enzymes, protease and reverse transcriptase.

Isentress is meant to be used as part of a "cocktail" of drugs to fight HIV in patients who have developed a resistance to older medications.

Last month, the FDA approved another novel HIV drug, Pfizer Inc.'s Selzentry. That drug is the first that works by blocking a crucial doorway, called the CCR5 receptor, that HIV often uses to enter white blood cells.
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FDA Approves New HIV Med

Pfizer announced today that the FDA has approved its new HIV drug Selzentry (maraviroc).

The drug is the first of a new class of HIV drugs to be approved in ten years. Selzentry is intended for patients who have the HIV-1 strain of the virus and are already resistant to multiple HIV drugs.

Selzentry is the first in a class of drugs known as CCR5 antagonists, which block the CCR5 co-receptor, the virus' predominant entry route into T-cells. Selzentry stops the R5 virus on the outside surface of the cells before it enters, rather than fighting the virus inside as do all other classes of oral HIV medicines.

Selzentry will become available next month. Pfizer plans on marketing the drug as Celsentri outside the USA. "Cell sentry", get it? Selzentry must be taken twice a day, unlike many current HIV meds.

from Joe.My.God.