Drug Makers to Team on AIDS Pill

Gilead Sciences Inc. and Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. announced Monday that they would collaborate on developing the first all-in-one, once-a-day pill to treat HIV infection -- a long-sought goal that would make it much easier for patients to stick with their medication.

Currently, the best treatment for acquired immune deficiency syndrome requires patients to take two to four pills a day. Less than a decade ago, many patients had to take 25 to 30 pills a day, often at precise times and under specific conditions such as with food, making it extremely difficult to stick to a schedule. Missing doses makes it easier for the virus to mutate and become resistant to medication.

In the first collaboration by competing AIDS drug makers, Gilead, based in Foster City, Calif., and Bristol-Myers Squibb, based in New York, formed a joint venture to test and market a single pill combining three widely used medicines from two different classes of AIDS drugs.

Because the three individual drugs already are on the market, the once-a-day combination could be approved and on sale as soon as the second half of 2006, said David Rosen, a spokesman for Bristol-Myers Squibb.

“To have it all in a single pill is terrific,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

The combination pill will include Sustiva, made by Bristol-Myers Squibb, and Viread and Emtriva, two AIDS drugs made by Gilead Sciences.

The latter two medications are from the same class of AIDS drugs, but they block copying of the AIDS virus at two different points early in its replication cycle. Sustiva is from a different class of drugs and attacks the virus later in the cycle.

“It’s the first time ever that two companies with competing products have worked together,” said Dr. Michael Saag, director of the AIDS Center at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. “This is something patient advocates and a lot of physicians have been pushing for over a decade.”

Fauci also said such partnerships were crucial.

Independent pharmaceuticals analyst Hemant Shah of HKS & Co. in Warren, N.J., said all the major AIDS drug makers except Merck & Co. have been working on combination treatments, given that individual drugs and AIDS “cocktails” mixing different pills eventually stop working.

“Bristol-Myers Squibb once dominated the AIDS market, but it kind of lost its muscle because it lacked the breadth of product line that GlaxoSmithKline had,” Shah said. “This clearly tells us that Bristol is very, very committed to the HIV market.

“We hope it’s the beginning of future collaborations,” he said.

Bristol-Myers Squibb shares slipped 5 cents to $25.17 on the New York Stock Exchange. Gilead shares gained 16 cents to $35.01 on Nasdaq.