A New Way to Fight HIV: CCR5 Inhibitors

The past year has brought so many new drug approvals that even some HIV experts are scratching their heads as they try to figure out how all of these meds work and how they can best be used to treat people with HIV. Today, we're going to look at one of the new classes, or types, of HIV medications. Called CCR5 inhibitors, this drug class attacks HIV in a totally new way. Helping us to understand this new drug class will be Dr. David Hardy, a researcher and clinician who is the director of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. He is also one of the leading researchers looking at Selzentry (maraviroc, Celsentri), the first CCR5 inhibitor to be approved in the United States. He'll give us the lowdown on how this new drug class works and put it into context.