First up in our Drug Hall of Fame is the first antiviral drug approved to extend life for patients with HIV/AIDS: AZT.
Watch this 1-minute video for a short introduction to AZT (from 2017):
AZT, or azidothymidine, was originally developed in 1964 as a potential agent to thwart cancer; the compound was supposed to insert itself into the DNA of a cancer cell and disable its ability to replicate and produce more tumor cells. But it didn’t work when it was tested in mice and was put aside.
Two decades later, after AIDS emerged, the pharmaceutical company Burroughs Wellcome began evaluating a massive number of potential anti-HIV agents, hoping to find anything that might work against this new viral foe. Among the compounds tested was a reformulated version of the original AZT compound. When it was put into a dish with animal cells infected with HIV, it blocked the virus’s activity.
The FDA approved AZT as the first medication to treat AIDS on March 19, 1987, just 25 months after the first demonstration that AZT was active against HIV in the laboratory.
Before the availability of AZT, an HIV/AIDS diagnosis was often considered a death sentence. Today there are several more sophisticated classes of HIV drugs, each designed to block the virus at specific points in its lifecycle. Used in combination, they have an excellent chance of keeping HIV at bay indefinitely, lowering the virus’s ability to reproduce, infect, and ultimately cause death. These antiretroviral drugs have made it possible for millions of people diagnosed with HIV to live long and healthy lives, as long they continue to take their medications. There’s a good chance that if people with HIV take the right combination of drugs at the right time, the drugs can keep viral levels so low that the person and their sexual partners never get sick.
And for many people living with HIV, their therapy often still includes AZT.
Portions of the content on this page were adapted from Time Magazine’s 2017 story, “The Story Behind the First AIDS Drug” by Alice Mark (link).