NIMR working on HIV gel to prevent infection among women

The Nigerian Institute of Medical Research (NIMR) says it is working on a novel Microbicides Gel for the prevention of HIV among women.

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A Research Fellow at the Clinical Science Department in NIMR, Sabdat Ekama, disclosed this to journalists in Lagos on Thursday.

Ms Ekama said microbicides are a medicament containing anti-HIV agents, noting that they would be applied vaginally or rectally to prevent HIV infection.

According to her, globally, women are disproportionately affected by HIV, because heterosexual intercourse is a major mode of male-to-female HIV transmission.

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She said several prevention methods had been put in place over the years, such as post-exposure prophylaxis, prevention of mother-to-child transmission, pre-exposure prophylaxis, and others.

Ms Ekama explained that despite these preventive methods, the annual HIV global statistics team reported 1.3 million new infections globally in 2024, hence the urgent need for strategies to prevent new infections.

She said researchers have worked on microbicide development over the years.

However, the majority of them failed in clinical trials, because they were fraught with challenges.

“We look at the gaps and the lacunas of the previous HIV microbicides and look at how we can close these gaps to come up with a novel job microbicide vagina gel that will be suited for use amongst women,” she said.

“We have come up with a smart gel that is designed to be temperature-sensitive, such that, when it is liquid and room temperature, if applied to the body system, it becomes highly viscous to prevent leakage.

We employed a targeted drug delivery method to combat the challenges of conventional microbicides by using two anti-HIV agents, and we looked at the challenges of leakage.

“Previous microbicide gels tested in clinical trials reported challenges of vaginal leakage during home administration, cultural dependence on use, wetness, and all these challenges affected adherence to use and compliance to use.”

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According to the expert, research works are, at present, in the clinical stage amongst animal models, adding that the team looked forward to favourable outcomes, which will be a precursor to human clinical trials.

“This research project has gone to the individual preliminary research stage in which we assessed its safety on vaginal cells and also its efficacy on the HIV-1 VL viral stream,” she said.

“The results were promising and this gave us justification to proceed to the animal model pre-clinical studies and we are also trying to assess the toxicity, the tolerability and the safety in animal models,” she said.

(NAN)