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Conference addresses elimination of HIV/AIDS
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Researchers and clinicians from six continents met recently at a conference hosted by the journals Cell and The Lancet to discuss steps to eliminate AIDS globally.
Keynote speaker Anthony S. Fauci, MD, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said an AIDS-free world will require certain preventive strategies, including the expansion of HIV testing, circumcision, treatment as prevention, and prevention of mother-to-child transmission.
Anthony S. Fauci
"Biomedical interventions need to meld with human behavior and social determinants to achieve an AIDS-free world," Fauci said in a press release.
Several speakers discussed barriers to the shared goal of eliminating AIDS, including the latent HIV reservoir in infected patients, which was estimated by a recent study to be 60 times larger than previously thought. However, Warner C. Greene, MD, PhD, director of virology and immunology research at Gladstone Institutes, said new research has linked two pathogenic hallmarks of HIV infection — CD4 T-cell depletion and chronic inflammation — a hopeful development in the search for a cure.
"These discoveries could lead to three promising outcomes — an affordable bridge therapy for the 16 million who currently need but don't have access to antiretroviral therapies, a potential solution for those on ART and who are developing aging-related diseases a decade or more before the non-HIV infected population, and a potential clearing of the latent reservoir that could contribute to a cure for HIV/AIDS," Greene said in the release.
Conference delegates also discussed the development of a vaccine.
"We need a vaccine, but we still don't have an open road in front of us," said Nobel Prize winner David Baltimore, MD, of the California Institute of Technology, adding that the key to discovering an efficacious HIV vaccine may be derived from patients' immune response to infection.
At the conclusion of the conference, a panel of experts that included French virologist and Nobel Prize winner Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, PhD, discussed in broad terms the roadmap to the global elimination of HIV/AIDS, including access to quality health care and collaboration between researchers and clinicians.
"I'm here as a witness of 30 years of HIV science and translational research," Barré-Sinoussi said. "We need to continue the effort of working together if we want to make a progress toward a cure."