New Hope for HIV/ AIDS Patients

 

 

In the 1980s, researchers were scrambling to find drugs to combat HIV, one of the deadliest viruses known to man.

Yale scientists William Prusoff and Tai-Shun Lin were experimenting in their laboratory one day with a cancer drug known as d4T, when they discovered that it was very effective against HIV. It worked by shutting off the virus’s ability to reproduce, stopping it in its tracks. Just when the AIDS epidemic was in full force, a clinical trial was conducted to find out how well d4T worked in people.

The results were conclusive; Dr. Prusoff recalls his delight when he realized that what he and Dr. Lin had observed in the laboratory was working in patients.

In 1992, d4T became the first drug tested under the Food and Drug Administration’s parallel track policy, which gave people with life-threatening illnesses access to drugs still in clinical trials. Today, d4T, now known as Zerit, is widely available around the world to people infected with HIV.