CBB Researcher Emmanuel Ho, Pharmacy, is developing a new tool to protect women from HIV infection.
The tool is a vaginal implant that decreases the number of cells that the HIV virus can target. This implant takes advantage of some people's natural immunity to the virus.
“We know that some drugs taken orally never make it to the vaginal tract, so this implant could provide a more reliable way to encourage T cells not to respond to infection and therefore more reliably and cheaply prevent transmission,” said said Ho.
Ho commented that he does not yet know if this method can act as a stand alone option for preventing HIV transmission, or if it is best used in conjunction with other prevention methods.
The article recently appeared in the Journal of Controlled Release.