Elvitegravir is an investigational new drug

Investigational New Drug

The United States Food and Drug Administration's Investigational New Drug program is the means by which a pharmaceutical company obtains permission to ship an experimental drug across state lines before a marketing application for the drug has been approved...

 for the treatment of HIV

HIV

Human immunodeficiency virus is a lentivirus that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome , a condition in humans in which progressive failure of the immune system allows life-threatening opportunistic infections and cancers to thrive...

 infection. It acts as an integrase inhibitor

Discovery and development of integrase inhibitors

The first human immunodeficiency virus case was reported in the 1980s. Many drugs have been discovered to treat the disease but mutations in the virus and resistance to the drugs make development difficult. Integrase is a viral enzyme that integrates retroviral DNA into the host cell genome....

. It is undergoing Phase III clinical trial

Clinical trial

Clinical trials are a set of procedures in medical research and drug development that are conducted to allow safety and efficacy data to be collected for health interventions...

 conducted by the pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences

Gilead Sciences

Gilead Sciences is a biopharmaceutical company that discovers, develops and commercializes therapeutics. For many years since the company was founded, the company concentrated primarily on antiviral drugs to treat patients infected with HIV, hepatitis B or influenza. In 2006, Gilead acquired two...

, which licensed EVG from Japan Tobacco

Japan Tobacco

, abbreviated JT, is a cigarette manufacturing company. It is part of the Nikkei 225 index. In 2009 the company was listed at number 312 on the Fortune 500 list. The company is headquartered in Toranomon, Minato, Tokyo. The international headquarters are in Geneva, Switzerland.-History:The company...

 in March 2008.

According to the results of the phase II clinical trial, patients taking once-daily elvitegravir boosted by ritonavir

Ritonavir

Ritonavir, with trade name Norvir , is an antiretroviral drug from the protease inhibitor class used to treat HIV infection and AIDS....

 had greater reductions in viral load

Viral load

Viral load is a measure of the severity of a viral infection, and can be calculated by estimating the amount of virus in an involved body fluid. For example, it can be given in RNA copies per milliliter of blood plasma...

 after 24 weeks compared to individuals randomized to receive a ritonavir-boosted protease inhibitor

Protease inhibitor

Protease inhibitor can refer to:* Protease inhibitor : a class of medication that inhibits viral protease* Protease inhibitor : molecules that inhibit proteases...

.