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Drug companies Trimeris and Roche Holding, both of which are working on a new class of AIDS drugs designed to help patients who develop resistance or intolerance to the disease's standard treatment, are reporting that six small studies have shown patients to respond favorably to their products. The companies' new drugs, called T-20 and T-1249, bind to the AIDS virus outside the cell and prevent it from ever entering the cell and infecting it.

Current AIDS treatment involves a cocktail of antiretrovirals, three classes of drugs that use different means of preventing the virus from reproducing once inside the cell. According to Dani Bolgnesi, chief executive of Trimeris, 300,000 patients worldwide will probably have developed a resistance or intolerance to the cocktail by 2002.

Two 500-patient, Phase III trials of T-20 are also being conducted both in Europe and the United States, the results of which should be available next year. Phase III trials are necessary for the drugs to receive federal approval.

Editor's Note: from The Wall Street Journal