CNS: HIV Vaccine

Showing posts with label HIV Vaccine. Show all posts

[podcast] WHO Director for HIV, Hepatitis and STIs Dr Meg Doherty in conversation with CNS

In lead up to the International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2024) in Munich, Germany, listen to this podcast featuring Dr Meg Doherty, World Health Organization (WHO) Director of Global HIV, Hepatitis and Sexually Transmitted Infections Programmes. She is in conversation with Shobha Shukla, CNS founder, Managing Editor and Executive Director.

Listen to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Google Podcasts, Spotify, TuneIn, Podtail, BluBrry, Himalaya, ListenNotes, American Podcasts, CastBox FM, Ivy FM, Player FM, iVoox, and other podcast streaming platforms.

[podcast] Lessons learnt: What the COVID-19 experience in India can teach us about HIV vaccine research, delivery and access

Today is HIV Vaccine Awareness Day! IAVI and CNS bring to you a very special podcast, Lessons Learnt: What the COVID-19 experience in India can teach us about HIV vaccine research, delivery and access, where three experts discuss the past, present and future of HIV research in the current COVID context, and the implications of this research on scientific and clinical practice, and community participation.

Listen to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn, aCast, Podtail, BluBrry, Himalaya, ListenNotes, American Podcasts, CastBox FM, Ivy FM, and other podcast streaming platforms.

This podcast features Mitchell Warren, who is among the most respected voices on human rights-based responses to #endAIDS. He is in conversation with CNS founder and Executive Director Shobha Shukla. He shares insights on range of issues spanning over two decades on HIV prevention research, ethics and human rights as scientific studies go forward, learnings from COVID-19 vaccine research, dire need to engage all stakeholders (political will and leadership, funders/ donors, regulators, manufacturers, communities among others) and a lot more! He is also the co-chair of ongoing 4th HIV Research For Prevention global conference, and Executive Director of AVAC.

Listen to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn, aCast, Podtail, BluBrry, Himalaya, ListenNotes, American Podcasts, CastBox FM, Ivy FM, PodAlong, and other podcast streaming platforms.

[video] HIV science has advanced but politics, policies and human rights have been far too slow to adapt to #endAIDS

No single HIV prevention method can end AIDS: Combination prevention is key

As HIV prevention needs and contexts vary, it is important to expand the range of effective prevention options that people can use. Archbishop Desmond Tutu said in a video link at the first-ever international conference on all HIV-related biomedical prevention research, that “No single method of prevention can end this epidemic on its own." That is why conferences on microbicides and vaccines merged to provide one single global platform to deliberate on a spectrum of biomedical prevention research for HIV. HIV Research for Prevention (HIVR4P) is being held in Cape Town, South Africa.

Bobby Ramakant - CNS
According to Jim Pickett, Chair of International Rectal Microbicides Advocates (IRMA): Rectal microbicides are products currently under research – that could take the form of gels or lubricants – being developed and tested to reduce a person's risk of HIV or other sexually transmitted infections from anal sex. The risk of becoming infected with HIV during unprotected anal sex is 10 to 20 times greater than unprotected vaginal sex because as the rectal lining is only one-cell thick, the virus can more easily reach immune cells to infect.

Shobha Shukla - CNS
According to a new UNAIDS report on HIV in Asia and the Pacific, there is mixed progress on eliminating new HIV infections in infants. Cambodia, Malaysia, Myanmar and Thailand have over 50% coverage of all services to prevent PTCT (parent to child transmission) of HIV while Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka lag behind with less than 30%. All countries in the region are trying to introduce WHO recommended PPTCT treatment option B to provide early and immediate ARV treatment to all HIV+ positive mothers. Yet overall there has been only 9% reduction in new infections among infants between 2010 and 2012. Cutting down the number of such infections by 90% requires great effort.

Nenet Ortega - CNS
The Global Fund has helped governments and civil society organizations to ‘jump start’ their programmes by funding national HIV, tuberculosis (TB) and malaria initiatives. This has included support to community work, and ART provision etc. This has also helped stimulate domestic health spending, as governments are expected to provide counterpart funds, and eventually to address issues of longer-term sustainability.

Ishdeep Kohli - CNS
In the race for a cure for HIV, we have the Berlin Patient, the Mississippi Baby, the Visconti Cohort - 14 patients in France - and most recently, two men in Boston who were declared to be HIV- free. Through a variety of mechanisms and treatments including bone marrow stem-cell transplants and gene therapy, all of these people were able to shake the virus and stop taking the drugs that HIV-infected patients ordinarily need to survive. They represent possibility - that modern science is capable of curing a deadly infection.

Citizen News Service - CNS
Civil society networks, United Nations agencies and other partners in Asia and the Pacific are urging a rapid increase of voluntary confidential community-based HIV testing and counselling for key populations at higher risk in the region – including men who have sex with men, transgender people, sex workers and people who use drugs – to help ensure more people in need are able to access life-saving antiretroviral treatment.

The world’s largest open scientific conference on HIV/AIDS – the 7th IAS Conference on HIV Pathogenesis, Treatment and Prevention (IAS 2013) will be held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia from 30 June-3 July 2013. Held every two years, the conference, which is one of the world´s leading open HIV scientific forums, provides a unique opportunity for the world’s leading scientists, clinicians, public health experts and community leaders to examine the latest developments in HIV-related research, and to explore how scientific advances can be translated quickly into effective interventions to prevent and treat HIV, particularly in low and middle-income countries.

Moses Wasamu, Kenya
Results of recent research findings underscore the need to accelerate development of additional HIV prevention options for women in the area of HIV prevention. The HIV prevention trial was done among women in Uganda, Zimbabwe and South Africa, and its results released at a scientific conference in the US early March. At the same time, the results from a large-scale HIV prevention trial among African women known as VOICE (Vaginal and Oral Interventions to Control the Epidemic), provide an urgent reminder that products must meet the needs of the people using them.

….So said Dr Mitchell Warren, Executive Director of AVAC: Global Advocacy for HIV Prevention, in an exclusive interview given to CNS onsite at the AIDS Vaccine 2012. Underlining the importance of understanding the complexities of science and community, he emphasized that, “None of the HIV/AIDS prevention methods can be the answer to the problem by themselves. It is not the product but the person who uses it that prevents HIV. A condom will not work if not used. Even if we have the gel or a vaccine unless people think about their risk and go for testing nothing will work. So, one should resist the temptation to fall in love with technology - as all scientific interventions require behavioural changes—not only at the individual level but also at the health system levels.”

Microbicides Set To Change The landscape Of HIV Prevention

The concept of microbicides as an HIV prevention tool was first proposed 20 years ago. Microbicide is a product applied topically in the vagina or rectum with the intention of preventing sexually transmitted infections (STIs) including HIV. It can take different forms such as a gel, foam or a ring. The idea to use the ARV-based tenovofir gel was mooted in 2003 but the proof of concept came only in 2010. The microbicide tenofovir gel was found safe and effective in reducing the risk of HIV in women who used it before and after vaginal sex in a study called CAPRISA 004. The CAPRISA 004 study demonstrated an overall 39% reduction in HIV infection, with 54% HIV reduction in women who used tenofovir gel consistently, providing proof of concept that microbicides indeed can prevent sexually transmitted HIV if used consistently.

In the event that control and elimination of HIV is realised in the next few years, maintaining this success is going to be hard without a vaccine. That is how the Director of the US’ National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Disease Dr Anthony Fauci analysed the situation at the AIDS Vaccine 2012 conference which ended Wednesday (Sept.12) in the American city of Boston. “If you want to have [HIV] control and maintenance of control, elimination and maintenance of elimination, in my mind the science and behaviour will tell me that it will virtually impossible to get to the point of true control and elimination without a vaccine,” said Dr Fauci in a keynote lecture.

Modeling based on a timeline where 80 percent coverage of Voluntary Medical Male Circumcision (VMMC) of men age 15-49 is achieved by 2015 suggests that more than 20 percent of new HIV infections would be averted by 2025, with financial savings of an estimated USD 16.6 billion in future medical costs, said Cindra Feuer, Communications and Policy Advisor, AVAC - Global Advocacy for HIV Prevention at AIDS Vaccine 2012.

Long road to vaccines

HIV is said to have killed more than 30 million people across the globe since it was discovered in 1983 by Dr Francoise Barre-Sinoussi, at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. Traditionally vaccines have been extraordinary tools to prevent infectious diseases, stop epidemics and save millions of lives. However with regard to HIV, this time honoured concept of a stand-alone prevention modality vaccine seems unlikely. In the global efforts to end the AIDS pandemic an HIV vaccine would be a critical component of a comprehensive combination prevention strategy.

If we really want to turn the HIV tide, we cannot afford to wait for a 'magic bullet', but do a better job with a broad range of HIV prevention and treatment tools and approaches at hand. The good news is that there is a growing list of evidence-based HIV prevention approaches that should be scaled up without delay to turn the tide (along with treatment and care). The bad news is that highly effective HIV vaccines may not be coming so soon. The sooner vaccines come, the earlier we can put the 'nail in the coffin' of eliminating HIV (provided we implement non-vaccine modalities of HIV prevention and care 'really really well'), said Dr Anthony Fauci, Director, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), National Institute of Health (NIH), USA, at the AIDS Vaccine 2012.

Scientists from around the world will gather in Boston next week to present more than 400 new research studies updating global progress in the search for a safe and effective HIV vaccine. AIDS Vaccine 2012, the world's only scientific meeting dedicated exclusively to HIV vaccine research, runs Sunday, 9 September through Wednesday, 12 September. The annual AIDS vaccine meeting is hosted by the Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise a unique collaboration of HIV vaccine research, funding, advocacy and stakeholder organizations. The Local Hosts for AIDS Vaccine 2012 are the Harvard University Center for AIDS Research and the Ragon Institute of Massachusetts General Hospital, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University.