Indinavir (IDV; trade name Crixivan, made by Merck) is a protease inhibitor used as a component of highly active antiretroviral therapy to treat HIV/AIDS.

[2] Indinavir does not cure HIV/AIDS, but it can extend the length of a person's life for several years by slowing the progression of the disease.

Unboosted indinavir requires a very precise dosing of 400 mg every eight hours to thwart HIV from forming drug-resistant mutations, including resistances to other protease inhibitors.

Drug users must significantly increase their water intake due to indinavir's low solubility that can cause it to crystallize.

Furthermore, it is no longer recommended to use in the United States for initial treatments due to pill burden and risk of kidney stones.

In order to avoid this as much as possible, it is important for users to consistently take the exact amount of the drug at the allocated times.

Over a year later, in July 1988, Nancy Kohl, Emilio Emini, et al., published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of the Science about the idea of inhibiting the protease.

[11] In February 1989, Manuela Navia, Paula Fitzgerald, et al., published a paper that showed the three-dimensional structure of HIV's protease enzyme.

[citation needed] In January 1992, researchers synthesized indinavir sulfate (Crixivan), which was assigned compound number L-735,524.

[11] Bruce D. Dorsey, James P. Guare, Joseph P. Vacca, M. Katherine Holloway and Randall W. Hungate were named inventors of the year by the Intellectual Property Owners for Crixivan.

It significantly increased life expectancies and decreased noticeable symptoms from infectious diseases that were the result of a weakened immune system from the virus.

Currently, it is being replaced by newer drugs that are more convenient to take, less likely to promote virus resistance, and less toxic, such as darunavir or atazanavir.

[5] In January 1996, Merck & Co. proved that indinavir was a clinically efficient drug based on data from human trials.

Eligible patients were those who received AZT for at least 6 months and have CD4 cell counts between 50 and 400, viral loads of at least 200,000 copies/mL, and had no prior antiretroviral therapy with protease inhibitor or lamivudine.

[16] Because of its limited supply, Merck decided to adopt a single distributor system in which they would send indinavir to only one pharmaceutical retail company.

[16] Because the company used a single distributor system to sell their drugs, the retail price was marked up 37% by the pharmacy that sold it.

In response to this hefty price, Merck stated that it cost a lot to research and develop the drug, and they did not have enough supplies to sell it through a normal distributor system.