The News of an HIV Cure Is Great News For These Publicly-Traded Companies

Sunday's announcement of an infant born with HIV being cured with a cocktail of drugs was a landmark medical achievement. But, its implications could loom large for the manufacturers of HIV/AIDS drugs whose vague efforts into finding effective treatments may have finally come to fruition, opening up a viable market for their sale. Keep the name of these companies and their treatments fresh in your memory. With favorable patents that don't expire for several years, their investment into HIV/AIDS research could pay off big in the coming years:

ViiV Healthcare is a joint venture between GlaxoSmithKline plc

and Pfizer Inc

. Their combination of lamivudine and zidovudine, branded as Combivir, was one of the two medications used in the cured baby's treatment. Together, the drugs form a Nucleoside Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitor (NRTI), which block the action of reverse transcriptase, the enzyme HIV requires for reproduction. Combivir's patent expires in May 2016.

The other treatment involved in the infant's HIV cure was Abbott Laboratories' Kaletra, a protease inhibitor (PI) that has been regarded as the best treatment by the US Department of Health and Human Services since 2006. Except Abbott's stock to increase, especially if Kaletra's success can be replicated. Kaletra loses its patent status in July 2013.

According to Bloomberg, Merck is currently developing a drug that showed early signs of clearing hidden deposits of HIV. The drug was named by researchers at the Sunday announcement as one they continue to study in treatments. It is currently in Phase II of development as of November 1, 2012.

Johnson & Johnson offers a PI of their own in Prezista and Intelence, an NRTI. The former was just approved in November of 2012. J&J also offers PROCIT, a useful treatment of anemia in HIV-infected patients when taken with other HIV medications. Prezista and Intelence's patents expire in December 2015 and November 2019, respectively.

Gilead is the largest manufacturer of HIV treatments in the world, and sports a roster of HIV treatments, including Atripla, a 2006 FDA-approved HRTI that combines Gilead's Truvada with Bristol-Myers Squibb's efavirenz. Other HRTI's in Gilead's lineup are Emtriva, Viread and Complera, the latter recently approved by the FDA in August 2011. Gilead recently settled a drug patent suit with Teva to avoid trial over Viread following Teva's move to begin sales of a generic in 2007. Per the settlement, Teva will begin selling a generic version of Viread in December 2017. Atripla, Emtriva and Complera's patent expiration dates are May 2013, September 2015 and July 2017, respectively. Stribild is a integrase inhibitor, which recently gained approval by the FDA in August 2012.