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Microbicides: still a long road to success
Christophe Vanpouille1, Anush Arakelyan, Leonid Margolis
1Eunice Kennedy-Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA.
Abstract:
The development of efficient microbicides, the topically applied compounds that protect uninfected individuals from acquiring HIV-1, is a promising strategy to contain HIV-1 epidemics. Such microbicides should of course possess anti-HIV-1 activity, but they should also act against other genital pathogens, which facilitate HIV-1 transmission. The new trend in microbicide strategy is to use drugs currently used in HIV-1 therapy. The success of this strategy is mixed so far and is impaired by our limited knowledge of the basic mechanisms of HIV-1 transmission as well as by the inadequacy of the systems in which microbicides are tested in preclinical studies.
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