Here's a summary including the mechanism of action from a UW professor in 2022:
However, what I still don't have a handle on is how does lenacapavir act so long that it only needs to be administered every six months?
From the explanation lenacapavir works on the capsid directly, it's not acting on the immune system by training the body's defences as with a traditional vaccine. Surely this molecule can't just hang around for six months without being gobbled up by the liver or such.
What am I missing here?
Anyway, whatever, it's clearly a brilliant bit of chem eng.
Also, the dose makes the poison, etc.
Big cats are not canines :(
Western society isn’t scientifically literate enough to develop these things at the moment, so they will happen in APEC for now.
PFAS stands for a very specific thing: perfluorinated alkenes. The drugs in question are not alkenes.
It can! The fluorines likely protect the metabolic target. At that point you're relying on excretion of unchanged drug through the kidneys or liver (which excrete into bile, and then eliminated in feces).
Google tells me the half-life of the subcutaneous administration is 2 to 3 months, so twice yearly injections makes sense.
Well so am I. One of the great things about HN is the sheer amount of stuff I learn from others who post here. Alendronate is yet another instance. :-)
As Alendronate, Alendronic acid, is not a drug I'm familiar with I've just looked it and its structure up on Wiki to get a rough idea what it's about.
I'm not doubting Alendronic acid's 10 year half life in bone tissue but I'm now curious how that comes about. It has five hydroxy groups which I'd have thought would have made it highly soluble in water. And —OH groups tend to be reactive.
As I said, biochemistry isn't my field but I'm now intrigued about how it actually works. No doubt the phosphorus bonds to or goes into strengthening bones but why that doesn't happen immediately has me stumped. So experts I need your help.
Clearly, many chemicals can and do survive in tissue for years, PFAS being an example but we don't think of them being highly reactive either. Obvious examples of chemicals that aren't eliminated by the body that everyone is familiar with are tattoo dyes. No doubt a bad example as they don't seem to be biologically active and remain more by mechanical adhesion than by any other means.
The issue I don't have a good handle on is how biologically active drugs can remain unchanged for so long before being taken up and used by the body. Perhaps they're stored as intermediate metabolites or similar.
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.molpharmaceut.3c00626
tl;dr: the molecule is poorly soluble in water, so by suspending a bunch of microparticles and injecting them subcutaneously, the drug very slowly dissolves over time, and it’s very potent, so only a little bit is necessary to do its job.
It very clearly prevents infection incredibly well, proof of that in the real world is exactly why there is excitement over this drug.
It also sounds as though you misunderstood the mechanism, it interferes in both an early and a late step in the viral process, there no theoretical reason to describe it as "not interfering with infection".
That implies that as long as the drug is present, the virus won’t be able to replicate, however as soon as the drug is no longer present the virus will start replicating. Because the cell has been infected.
Now, if replication is stopped, AND the body is able to destroy the first infected cell, then the patient is cured, but otherwise?
I guess that even if the body's immune system cannot get rid of that "patient cell zero", it is quite possible that a 6 month period is enough for the cell to die from the virus.
I do not have any medical training though, so please correct me if I am wrong.