Calif. Scientist Channels Success With HIV Drugs To Battle Zika
Virologist Koen Van Rompay helped to develop Truvada by testing it in monkeys first. “One of the reasons I’m so eager to do Zika virus research is because I’ve seen with HIV how strategies that we develop in monkeys can really make a big difference,” he says.
Capital Public Radio/KXJZ:
California Virologist Uses Lessons Learned From HIV To Develop Zika Drug
At the California National Primate Center at UC Davis, [Koen Van] Rompay and his team have access to more than 4,000 animals, which are mostly Rhesus monkeys, to develop a primate model that could lead to strategies to protect human fetuses and babies against Zika infection... Currently, he and his team are injecting Zika virus directly into the amniotic fluid of pregnant monkeys to find out why early infection seems to have the most detrimental effect on the fetus. One of the fetuses died a week after infection. (Johnson, 9/16)