David Ho’s pioneering combination anti-retroviral therapy for HIV/AIDS patients changed the dire prognosis for those diagnosed with HIV/AIDS when it was introduced in the mid-1990s. Today, Ho is at the forefront of another AIDS game-changer, with his exploration of a new combination treatment that requires administration only once a month instead of daily. On August 12, the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) announced that Ho was recipient of its 2011 Avant-Garde Award to “stimulate high-impact research that may lead to groundbreaking opportunities for the prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS in drug abusers.”
This five-year award of $500,000 per year will support Ho’s research, which “has the potential to make treatment much less burdensome on HIV patients, and at the same time improve outcomes,” according to NIDA Director Nora D. Volkow. Drug-abusers in particular have difficulty following the rigorous daily medication regimen currently required.
Ho said that his new therapy, which uses antibody-like molecules, “could be the next generation of medications to treat HIV.”
The National Institute on Drug Abuse, part of the National Institutes of Health, is concerned with HIV/AIDS because the virus is often contracted by those injecting drugs or through risky sexual behavior when intoxicated.
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