Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology (KRICT) said Thursday that an HIV treatment candidate developed by its team has been transferred to a domestic company and began sales in China as a new drug.

Dr. Son Jong-chan (left) at Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology explains the development of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) drug at the institute’s laboratory.
Dr. Son Jong-chan (left) at Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology explains the development of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) drug at the institute’s laboratory.

The institute said that the drug candidate, once could have been thrown away, was transferred to a new drug development company, Kainos Medicine, and eventually developed as the first HIV treatment after 26 years of development and began marketing in China.

The KRICT research team, led by Drs. Son Jong-chan and Lee Ill-young, began their research in 1995, collaborated with the U.S. Gilead Science in 2006, and discovered a drug candidate for AIDS in 2008. It is not an injection but a mid- to low-priced drug eaten once a day. The developers will launch the treatment in Latin America and Africa, too. 

Gilead Science once tried to receive technology transfer but canceled it after selecting a different drug candidate that had completed clinical trials.

However, a domestic company, Kainos Medicine, conducted phase 1 clinical trials in Korea and acquired the technology from KRICT in 2012. In 2014, Kainos Medicine signed an agreement with Jiangsu Aidea Pharmaceutical, granting marketing rights of the new HIV drug in China. After conducting phase 1 to 3 clinical trials of the candidate, China’s National Medical Products Administration authorized the company to sell the drugs in the market.

The world still lacks therapies that can completely cure AIDS as the existing HIV treatments only prevent patients with the immunodeficiency virus from worsening. According to the World Health Organization, about 1.7 million newly infected HIV patients occurred worldwide in 2018. The organization said infections have been decreasing globally, but some countries, including Korea and China, have shown more cases of HIV patients than others.

WHO said it estimated 1.25 million Chinese people were newly infected by the virus in 2018, marking the highest increasing rate for a single country. It also allegedly said China’s HIV treatment market could have exceeded 1 trillion won ($842 million). 

The newly developed treatment is a non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor (NNRTI) that prevents the proliferation of HIV. It has shown fewer neuropsychiatric side effects and minimizes genetic toxicity in clinical trials conducted in China. In addition, it demonstrated an excellent antiviral effect and could be taken together with other drugs.

In the past, patients infected by HIV tended to die from the weakened immune system, but the recent drug developments helped patients manage AIDS like a chronic disease.

Gilead Science has been leading the global HIV treatment market, which is estimated to near 16 trillion won for now.

“This is the first case that a drug candidate developed by KRICT has been approved as a new drug,” Dr. Son said. “We expect many other candidates to be developed as new drugs in the future to improve human health and lifespan.”

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