Full Pipeline: Success of experimental AIDS drugs offers promise of future therapies

Three experimental drugs designed to thwart HIV have performed well in early tests on AIDS patients. If further testing supports these preliminary findings, the drugs might serve as able stand-ins for existing drugs in patients whose HIV becomes resistant to existing therapies.

The three new drugs–unveiled at the 10th Conference on Retrovirus and Opportunistic Infections in Boston last week–all hinder HIV but do so by distinctly different means.