Where are we with injectables against HIV infection and what are the remaining challenges?

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Drug adherence has been a recurring issue in the field of HIV treatment, and low treatment adherence is typically associated with emergence of drug resistance, treatment failure and increased risks of transmission.

Injectable antiretroviral drugs offer a unique opportunity to counter this issue for the treatment of HIV-positive individuals. In addition, injectables offer a remarkable opportunity to reduce new HIV infections, if applied in the context of both treatment-as-prevention and pre-exposure prophylaxis.

Areas covered: Researchers and drug companies are developing long-acting agents that possess long biological half-life and excellent pharmacokinetic profiles that can be administered intramuscularly, intravenously, or subcutaneously. These long-acting injectables are categorized as drugs that target different steps of HIV replication cycle or monoclonal antibodies that target HIV entry.

Expert commentary: Injectables against HIV have the potential to revolutionize the fight against HIV by facilitating both treatment and prevention in a wide variety of clinical settings. Several challenges remain including the identification of potent two-drug combinations of drugs that can be formulated as injectables, and thorough drug-drug interaction studies with a broad variety of medications. Finally we believe that the healthcare benefits of injectables will require regulatory changes to allow self-injection before they reach their full potential.

KEYWORDS:

• Antiretroviral drugs
• injectable drugs
• long-acting agents
• HIV
• treatment adherence
• antibodies

Declaration of interest

The authors have no relevant affiliations, financial involvement with any organization, entity with a financial interest in, financial conflict with the subject matter, or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties. Peer reviewers on this manuscript have no relevant financial or other relationships to disclose.

Additional information

Funding

The manuscript was not funded.