The Long Path To Developing An AIDS Drug

By 2002, Daria Hazuda had bet her career and several years of her life on what she hoped would be a groundbreaking HIV drug, one that could help save lives and reap huge profits for her employer, Merck & Co. Inc.

When the phone rang in her lab in West Point, Montgomery County, the news was bad: In tests, Hazuda’s drug had sickened dogs. The results threatened to kill a project her superiors already were questioning because competitors’ ideas seemed more promising.

“It was really devastating to the whole team,” Hazuda said. “We had worked so hard.”

Dead ends, however, had always spurred her on.

“It’s like being a detective, putting the pieces together to make a story and seeing how those seemingly unrelated pieces can come together in that big eureka moment,” said Hazuda, a fan of John le Carre’s spy novels.

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