DRUGS that block the action of a protective protein in the placenta could help to stop HIV-positive mothers from passing the virus on to their unborn children.
P-glycoprotein (P-gp) stops toxic chemicalsincluding drugsfrom passing through the placenta, and also helps to maintain the blood-brain barrier. In cancer, P-gp can make tumour cells resistant to drugs by pumping them out of the cells. Alfred Schinkel and his colleagues at the Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam bred mice lacking the gene that codes for P-gp. When the researchers administered the anti-HIV drug saquinavir to these mice when they were pregnant, the fetuses got five to seven times as much of the drug as normal.
Buoyed by this success, the team administered saquinavir to normal mice, along with cancer drugs that are known to block the action of P-gp. The foetuses of these mice showed the same increase in saquinavir uptake as those ...
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