HIV-infected individuals will soon have a choice to ditch their daily doses of tablets and opt for a two-drug injectable regimen once or twice a month to suppress the HIV virus. This is if the clinical testing proves the drug's effectivity.

"Despite great progress in developing HIV treatments, the day-to-day burden of managing HIV remains high and poses challenges," said Paul Stoffels, Chief Scientific Officer for Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies in a statement. "The prospect of developing new therapies, such as long acting formulations which are broadly accessible, may offer hope to the many..."

The two drugs combined for the HIV regimen are rilpivirine from Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Janssen and cabotegravir from ViiV Healthcare. The companies are now ready to proceed with the Phase III clinical trial, which will begin in mid-2016.

Cabotegravir is a long-acting, investigational integrase inhibitor and an analogue of dolutegravir (Tivicay®). The rilpivirine, on the other hand, is a non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor (NNRTI) and is already being sold by Janssen as a single agent tablet under the name Edurant®.

Although HIV remains to be a manageable health condition, improvements can still be done in many areas, such as safety, dosing schedule, tolerability, drug interactions and adherence. The upcoming trials will address these major challenges that the two-drug regimen may face.

From last year's phase IIb LATTE 2 32-week trial, the all-injectable combination regimen showed comparable results with the current daily oral HIV regimen. The difference was on the frequency of taking the drugs. The former was only given to patients every four or eight weeks.

According to statistics from amfAR, nearly 37 million people are now living with HIV. In 2014 alone, an estimated two million people were newly infected with the virus, and over one million people died from HIV-AIDS. Out of all the 37 million HIV-infected individuals, only 41 percent have access to antiretroviral therapy.