Discovering Antiviral Drugs in a Cold War World

In a thoughtful and informative book, Renilde Loeckx, the former Ambassador of Belgium to the Czech Republic, tells the story of a committed group of scientists who, through collaboration, discovery, and trial and error, developed a series of antiviral drugs to combat the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). For Loeckx, the discovery of Viread in 2001, the first of many antiviral drugs, marked an important moment in the history of science. But, as the book reveals, this scientific breakthrough was the culmination of nearly fifty years of antiviral research that transcended hostilities and the contentious politics of the Cold War. It is a story, Loeckx suggests, that “straddles the working of scientists across oceans and continents,” and also “across deep political and ideological divides” (10). Cold War Triangle focuses primarily on the work of prominent Czech scientist Antonín Holý and Belgium physician and biologist Erik De Clercq, who together developed Tenofovir disoproxil, which was marketed under the name Viread. Through their collaboration, however, Holý and De Clercq forged an international network of professional scientists amid the evolving political instability of the Cold War world. Holý, for example, flourished as a young scientist in pre-1968 Czechoslovakia, even serving as a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Plank Institute in West Germany. As Soviet tanks crushed the promise of the Prague Spring, Holý’s collaboration with the West came to an abrupt halt. His isolation, however, would be short lived. De Clercq, who in 1964 became a researcher at the famed Belgian Rega Institute for Medical Research, travelled widely, building connections across the Cold War divide. It wasn’t until a 1976 symposium in Göttingen, West Germany, that Holý and De Clercq met and began a collaboration that was to outlast Cold War tensions.

Cold war · Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) · Ivory tower · Political science · Politics · Historical Medical Research and Treatments · History · Law · Medicine · Virology