Will an AIDS Pill a Day Keep the Virus Away? (BusinessWeek)

ByDeep Dives:Pfizer, Inc. (PFE) appears to have missed out on a significant opportunity when it was revealed yesterday that one of its jointly developed drugs was a component of a treatment therapy that appears to have eliminated the HIV virus in a newborn.

By Dana Blankenhorn: Gilead (GILD) has a big winner in Truvada. It's already generating $2.4 billion in annual sales as a partial treatment for HIV, combining two existing anti-virals, tenofovir disoproxil and emtricitabine, and has been on the market since 2004.

More must be done to stem HIV/AIDS in Eastern Europe, as infections continue to spiral in nations in the region, notably Russia, experts warned on Friday."Western Europe, including southern states like Portugal that used to cause a lot of worry on HIV years ago, have been showing to world that prevention is possible," Danish specialist Jens Lundgren told the wrap-up session of a three-day conference in the Estonian capital Tallinn."But in eastern Europe the epidemic keeps spreading," he warned an audience of 500 fellow experts.

The number of new cases of HIV/AIDS has dropped by about one-fifth over the past decade but millions of people are still missing out on major progress in prevention and treatment, the UN said on Tuesday.In 2009, 2.6 million people contracted the HIV virus that causes AIDS, down 19 percent from the 3.1 million recorded in 2001, said UNAIDS, the UN agency spearheading the international campaign against the disease."Fifty-six nations around the world have stabilised or significantly reduced infections," UNAIDS Executive Director Michel Sidibe told journalists.

Researchers believe that there will be a breakthrough in finding a cure for HIV “within months”. Danish scientists are expecting results that will show that “finding a mass-distributable and affordable cure to HIV is possible”.

A baby born with the virus that causes AIDS appears to have been cured, scientists announced Sunday, describing the case of a child from Mississippi who’s now two-and-a-half-years-old and has been off medication for about a year with no signs of infection. There’s no guarantee the child will remain healthy, although sophisticated testing uncovered just traces of the virus’ genetic material still lingering. If so, it would mark only the world’s second reported cure.

President Barack Obama declared Tuesday that any new case of HIV/AIDS was one too many, as he rolled out a new national strategy to cut infections and improve care for those with the disease.Thirty years after the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) burst to global attention, the first-ever National HIV/AIDS Strategy will demand action from federal, state and tribal governments and medical and scientific communities.It envisages cutting the annual number of new domestic infections by 25 percent over five years.