Natural Products for the treatment of HIV/AIDS

Access to anti-viral drug (ARV) therapy remains a serious issue for poor people in developing countries. Despite the influx of major funds in Sub-Saharan Africa over the last few years (10 billion USD in 2008) only about one third of all patients get regular access to ARV therapy. For people living with HIV/AIDS that do not fulfill the criteria of fullblown AIDS, there are very few options. Traditional medicines have long filled this gap albeit under conditions that are not optimal. EMF would like to contribute in three ways to better health care, i) in supplementing ARV therapy in fullblown AIDS patients with medicines that can contribute to the well being, quality of life and life span, ii) supporting AIDS patients that are unable to access ARV therapy with alternative medicines, iii) in providing such medicines to people with HIV/AIDS that are not yet fully symptomatic.

The goal of EMF is to discover, develop and ultimately bring to market a diverse portfolio of three types of products: i) Food supplements that fulfill safety criteria and have a favorable nutritional effect in people with HIV/AIDS, ii) Complementary medicines that are safe and demonstrably, in limited Phase I/phase II clinical trials have a positive and measurable effect on the quality of life of people with HIV/AIDS, and iii) novel anti-AIDS therapies registered for treatment of HIV/AIDS.

EMF is a charity-funded, not-for-profit organization that has since its inception in 2004 studied a large variety of more than 12'000 Natural Products for use in above settings. Important partners in this endeavor were the Natural Products Unit at Novartis AG, and are InPheno AG in Basel for the systematic testing of antiviral activity in a variety of cellular systems employing several HIV-1 substrains that are representative of the African epidemiology, CSIR in Pretoria, SA (Dr. Vinesh Maharaj) and, most recently, the Molecular Biology Institute in Yaoundé, Cameroun (Dr. Céline Nkenfou Nguefeu) and the Institute of Pharmaceutical Biology, Pharmazentrum, University Basel (Prof. M. Hamburger & Dr. O. Potterat).

A number of antivirally attractive product candidates have been discovered that are now in the process of being tested for their pharmacological suitability and developability. Some concrete examples of such products will be presented.