#microbicide

Researchers have designed a vaginal implant that has shown promise in animals as a potential new form of protection against HIV among women, Medical News Today reports. 

The nonprofit International Partnership for Microbicides (IPM) announced the launch of the trial, which is being conducted in San Francisco and Birmingham, Alabama, in collaboration with the National Institutes of Health (NIH)–funded Microbicides Trials Network (MTN).

Potential HIV Microbicide Tricks HIV Into Sudden Death Joining the crop of investigational anti-HIV agents that attack the virus before it can enter immune cells, a new potential microbicide element tricks HIV into expelling its DNA before latching onto a human cell, thus prompting a benign death: dual action virolytic entry inhibitor, or DAVEI. For more information, click here.

Clinical trials of an anti-HIV gel were cancelled after poor initial results.  An initial trial using tenofivir gel showed promise, but the new, larger study has failed to reproduce the same results.

Following last July's announcement of a positive AIDS gel trial, a new similar gel has showed promising results in an in-vivo trial involving monkeys.