NEW YORK -- The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Monday offered $60 million to a non-profit organization working to develop microbicides to protect women from HIV.
This is the largest grant in history to support research in microbicides, products such as gels and creams that reduce the risk of infection with HIV when applied to the vagina.
The International Partnership for Microbicides, recipient of the grant, estimates that a partially effective microbicide could prevent up to three million new HIV infections in the span of only three years.
Even if a vaccine against HIV emerges before a new microbicide, Dr. Helene Gayle of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation argued that experts anticipate that any early vaccine will not be 100 percent effective against the virus, and women may initially need to also rely on microbicides.
"So just as important as some of the other things we're investing in, like vaccines, clearly developing a safe and effective microbicide is a critical thing," Gayle said in a telephone press briefing.
IPM representatives said they plan to use the money to accelerate the development of new microbicides, and to ensure that they are affordable to poor women, who are often most in need of protection from HIV.
With the newest grant, the IPM now holds nearly $100 million in pledges and contributions, one-fifth the total experts believe will be needed to develop a viable microbicide.
The IPM expects that once the first microbicide appears, larger companies with more capital to invest -- such as large pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies -- will also realize the potential of microbicides.
"I feel very strongly that this commitment ... serves as a significant catalyst for increasing interest and investment in this much neglected but needed field," Quarraisha Abdool Karim, board member of IPM, said.
Currently, no microbicide is available to women seeking to reduce their risk of HIV infection, and only one major company -- Gilead -- is currently investing in this area of research.
Worldwide, around 5,000 women are infected with HIV each day, Abdool Karim noted.
A viable microbicide will be especially useful to women living in developing countries, according to the IPM. In sub-Saharan Africa, women make up more than one half of patients with HIV or AIDS. And in certain societies, many women are unable to ask their partners to practice safe sex.
"At this point in time, women do not have the kind of options they need to be able to put prevention in their own hands," Gayle noted.
Microbicides carry many advantages, experts note, in that women can apply them without their partners' knowledge, can still become pregnant if they desire, and can maintain skin-to-skin contact during intercourse.
Dr. Zeda Rosenberg of IPM said that several microbicides are expected to enter a final stage of clinical testing within the next two years.
Four of the products rely on a mechanism that "non-specifically" blocks HIV infection, meaning that the products also appear to help prevent infection by other viruses such as those that cause herpes, and even the bacteria behind other sexually transmitted diseases.
Another product prevents HIV infection by rendering the vagina more acidic, thereby creating an "inhospitable environment for HIV," Rosenberg noted.
She and her colleagues estimate that the first microbicide could become available to women by the year 2010.
