Imagine trying to find a treatment for a health condition, but you have no idea what it actually is? This was the challenge facing researchers in the early 1980s, when rare and often untreatable health conditions were being reported among the MSM (men who have sex with men) community – but little was known about why.

The 40-year fight against HIV
The official start to the AIDS epidemic is considered to be June 1981 when the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report noted that a rare pneumonia, generally seen in severely immunocompromised patients, was being seen in previously healthy men who have sex with men (MSM).[1][2]

It would be several years before the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) was identified as the underlying cause.Marty St. Clair, a virologist who was working for Burroughs Wellcome at the time, remembers the scepticism around whether a treatment could ever be found.

The scientific community didn’t believe that it was possible to discover an agent which would have activity against HIV.

But Marty and her colleagues at Burroughs Wellcome – a predecessor company to GSK – were up for the challenge. They had a wealth of virology expertise, a history of successfully developing antiviral medicines and an established network of relationships with experts across the globe. The group went on to develop Zidovudine (AZT), the first medicine for the treatment of HIV and AIDS – which was approved in the US on 19 March 1987.

The Burroughs Wellcome scientists urgently began a search for a potential new medicine to treat HIV and AIDS. Thousands of potential candidates were run through screening tests - scientists tested all of Burroughs Wellcome’s marketed anti-viral and late-stage investigational medicines; they dug deep into their research labs for any compounds that might have a chance of being active against HIV. Screening began in June of 1984 and by November 1984, a candidate had been identified.

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