Duke University Researchers Study Topical HIV-Killing Compounds

A researcher at Duke University is addressing important unanswered questions about the use of topical microbicides intravaginally to prevent the sexual transmission of HIV.

With a team of biomedical engineers, Dr. David Katz is studying crucial issues of whether candidate topical microbicides would reach the right tissues, adhere to them and remain in place over time. The hope is that women could someday shield themselves by applying such topical virus-killing chemicals in the vagina. But "objective, effective standards for evaluation of such proposed formulations do not yet exist," Katz said. The CDC estimates that between 120,000 and 160,000 adult and adolescent females in the United States now have HIV infections, rates that have increased over the last decade. Most were infected by heterosexual exposure to HIV.

Katz's microbicide research is supported by multiple grants. These include funds from the Food and Drug Administration's Office of Women's Health and the Contraceptive Research and Development Program (a non-profit organization supported by the US Agency for International Development); as well as funds from the Gates Foundation; a $2.3 million grant from the National Institutes of Health; and a $90,000 award from the American Foundation for AIDS Research. Katz holds both the Nello L. Teer Jr. Professorship in Biomedical Engineering in Duke's Pratt School of Engineering and a professorship in the medical school's Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

The research seeks to develop a base of knowledge about candidate topical microbicides by measuring candidate chemicals' viscosity and surface tension, and experimentally testing how they flow and adhere to surfaces similar to those in the vagina. Human studies are also being conducted with microbicide formulations in the vagina through a Duke Medical Center clinic using an endoscope-like instrument. This measures the coating of tissue surfaces and detects bare spots that might be particularly vulnerable to infection.

"We plan to compare the results of our studies in the laboratory with the measurements of formulation deployment in women in the clinic. Our goal here is to develop understanding and confidence in the accuracy of our laboratory methods to predict features of microbicide deployment that occur in women in the body," Katz said.

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