DENNIS LIOTTA and RAYMOND SCHINAZI

Two Emory researchers are credited with a miracle, having developed two of the antiretroviral drugs used by more than 90% of the people in the United States and by many around the world who are on medication for HIV/AIDS.

In the early 1990s, chemistry professor Dennis Liotta, virologist Raymond Schinazi, and researcher Woo-Baeg Choi co-developed the molecules 3TC and FTC, which help prevent or delay HIV from infecting other cells. With time, the WHO recommended FTC or Emtriva (the “Em” stands for Emory) and 3TC (Epivir, also used to treat hepatitis B) as part of a drug treatment regimen for HIV/AIDS. Ultimately, Emory sold the royalty rights to Emtriva, one of the largest such sales in higher education. Atripla, a combination of Emtriva and two previously approved drugs, now enables many patients to take just one pill a day, instead of the handful of pills required 10 years ago.

Emory continues to be a top leader in drug discovery. In 2011, a study in the New England Journal of Medicine named it as the nation’s fourth-largest contributor to the discovery of new drugs and vaccines by public-sector research institutions.

What drives the scientists behind Emory’s HIV/AIDS research? As Schinazi has said, “It’s all about taking people who are dying, abandoned, and condemned, and with these new drugs, allowing them to have normal lives.”—Mary J. Loftus