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Biotron shares soar on HIV drug data

An anti-HIV drug being developed by Australian biotech Biotron may represent one of the next big steps in the treatment of the virus.

Anti-viral drug developer Biotron has presented the latest data from a clinical trial of its drug, BIT225, on HIV-infected patients in Thailand, at the international AIDS conference in Melbourne.

Biotron says the findings show that BIT225 can reverse impairment to the immune system caused by HIV (human immunodeficiency virus).

"It's a really important finding," Biotron managing director Michelle Miller told AAP.

Dr Miller said the findings could lead to more effective treatments for HIV.

She said current treatments mainly involve patients taking anti-retroviral drugs that aim to keep a patient's virus-fighting T cells healthy.

Dr Miller said anti-retroviral drugs worked well on T cells but did not have much impact on the presence of "hidden pools" of HIV elsewhere in the body, such as infected macrophage cells.

These pools of virus, which could not be detected by standard tests, put continual pressure on the immune system.

Macrophage cells reside in different tissue of the body such as the brain, liver, lungs, skin and gut.

BIT225 targets the hidden pools of infected macrophage cells.

Dr Miller said some people saw little need for alternative treatments to HIV other than anti-retrovirals because anti-retrovirals enabled them to survive as long as they kept taking the drugs.

However, patients on anti-retrovirals had begun to present new health problems such as "immune ageing" and HIV-associated neuro-cognitive dysfunction (memory loss).

"Now people are saying we really need to get rid of the virus," Dr Miller said.

Shares in Biotron surged almost 24 per cent in the wake of news of latest trial data of BIT225.

Biotron rose 2.5 cents to 13 cents on Wednesday, after climbing as high as 16 cents.

Dr Miller said Biotron was now seeking a major pharmaceutical partner to help it take BIT225 to the next level of clinical testing, which were expensive and required large numbers of patients.