Ten scientists whose pioneering work helped cut AIDS deaths by almost half in a single year were honored by the pharmaceutical industry with its 1999 Discoverers Award. The researchers, who work for five pharmaceutical companies, discovered and developed four different protease inhibitors, which help prevent the AIDS virus from reproducing. These medicines are key ingredients in the combination drug therapy that has revolutionized the treatment of AIDS and given thousands of patients a future they didn't think they had. David Clough, Ian Duncan and Noel Roberts of Hoffmann-La Roche, and Drs.
Proteases act as molecular scissors.
They cut proteins, the molecules that perform a multitude of useful functions in the body. Pharmaceutical researchers had already discovered the role of a protease enzyme in high blood pressure and developed a medicine to stop its action. In 1986, they started building on that knowledge to decipher the protease that helps the AIDS virus reproduce. HIV-1 protease cleaves apart viral proteins, allowing them to assemble into functional virus particles. In reproducing, the virus grows new strands of proteins.