Novel Treatments for HIV Currently in Development

Segment Description: Paul Edward Sax, MD, clinical director, professor of medicine, Harvard Medical School; clinical director of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, discusses treatments for HIV that are currently in development.

Contagion®: What are some novel treatments for HIV in phase 3? What makes them unique options?

Dr. Sax: “A very interesting new approach to managing patients with HIV, who already are successfully treated, is long-acting injectable treatments. Currently, in phase 3 is a combination injectable treatment of cabotegravir and rilpivirine to be given every 4 weeks as an injection. This is really sort of a transformative idea — it's a way of treating HIV without taking a pill every day.

The reason why it's so interesting is because even though we right now have wonderful treatments — just a single pill a day that can successfully treat HIV in essentially everybody – there are some people who really don't like taking pills. And, there are many people who say that taking a pill every day reminds them of their diagnosis and reminds them of the stigma associated with HIV and so they're very eagerly awaiting this new approach to treatment.”