Will Kenya gift the world the first drug that kills Aids virus?

The last thing I would have expected is that a place associated with apes would be a centre of cutting edge medical research, especially on HIV of all things.

I wasn’t even familiar with the Institute of Primate Research (IPR) which – odder still – is an adjunct not of some medical facility but of the National Museums of Kenya, which now falls under the Sports, Arts and Culture ministry.

It is this IPR where the other day I learned some very serious inroads are being made against the virus that causes Aids. Some background is in order.

A cure for Aids has eluded the best scientific minds ever since HIV was identified in 1984. That is despite billions upon billions of dollars being spent by governments, top-notch universities, research institutes, pharmaceutical companies and foundations to find a cure. An Aids vaccine looks an even more remote prospect.

According to Dr Peter Gichuhi Mwethera, a reproductive health specialist and lead researcher in the IPR study, part of the problem is that science has been focusing more on understanding the HIV virus itself, rather than just dealing with what it does to the body.

Basically what the researchers have done is to come up with a microbicide called Unipron (a gel, really) that kills the virus once it is introduced inside a woman’s genital system. I’ll spare you the technical details of how it works, which a layman will have trouble following. The initial trials were done with baboons because, I am told, they best approximate the human physiology (did you know baboons menstruate?). Those initial trials have been completed and found to yield good results.

All the Aids medication available such as ARVs combats the virus when it has already infected the body. There is nothing in the world so far that destroys the thing once it has entered the bloodstream, or which can remove it entirely from the body.

There are scores of anti-HIV gels that are being tested all over the world. In Africa, Unipron is unique because it is the only such product that is on the threshold of getting professional approval for clinical trials.

This is the most critical stage in drug development; it involves testing the product not on animals, but on actual human beings. Only after successfully passing through clinical trials can a drug be licensed for the market.

Could this be another Kemron in the making, I wondered? There are those who remember the “Aids wonder drug” that was once peddled at political rallies during Daniel arap Moi’s time.

The whole thing ended up in confusion and embarrassment. One of the researchers behind Kemron later came up with another anti-Aids “medication” called Pearl Omega which turned out to be a dodo, too. It reportedly had side-stepped all known medical research protocols.

Dr Mwethera is decidedly not going that route. He is partnering with the Aga Khan and the Nairobi hospitals for clinical trials once the ethics boards of the two institutions grant the vital approval.

IPR’s overseer and director-general of the National Museums of Kenya, Dr Farah Idle, who is a pathologist, described the anticipated trials as “very promising”. Similar sentiments were expressed by Unipron’s co-collaborator at Aga Khan Hospital, Dr Alfred Murage, a gynaecologist.

Two other related products that originate from IPR research are already past trials and are on the market. One, Smugel, is a reproductive lubricant while the other, Smuscan, is used for ultrasound scans on pregnant women.

Already, the African Union has taken note of Unipron. At the AU-organised All Africa Public Sector Innovation Awards ceremony held in Brazzaville last month, Unipron won one of the top prizes among innovations deemed likely to become very beneficial to the public across the continent.

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