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June 07, 2013 07:42:00 PMEast meets West for vaccine design
Today was the last day of the first conference on vaccine design organized by Cold Spring Harbor (CSH) Asia, the Asian branch of the renowned Cold Spring Harbor conference in the state of New York. The gathering took place from June 3 to 7 at a brand new conference center and hotel built in 2010 in Suzhou, just one hour by car (half an hour by the recently constructed high speed train) from Shanghai. The center was built for CSH Asia to hold such meetings, said Maoyen Chi, who directs the CSH Asia program. So far, CSH Asia has held almost 40 meetings here, covering many reas of biology.
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Written by  Andreas von Bubnoff 
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June 05, 2013 05:42:00 PMLatest issue of VAX
Check out our May edition of VAX, which includes coverage from the "30 Years of HIV Science" meeting in Paris, global news and or latest Primer, that describes how recent breakthroughs offer a blueprint on how a vaccine may be designed to induce broadly neutraliziing antibodies.   
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Written by  Regina McEnery 
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May 30, 2013 12:42:00 PMKeeping their eyes on the prize
The ONE Campaign, a nonprofit established by the legendary Irish rocker turned global health expert Bono in 2004 to combat poverty and disease, released an 84-page report this week that actually might be worth reading.

Titled “Financing the Fight for Africa’s Transformation,” the report looks at how countries—particularly those in sub-Saharan Africa—are progressing toward achieving eight core United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015. 
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Written by  Regina McEnery 
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May 23, 2013 10:02:00 AMTalking About Three Decades of HIV Science
It was 30 years ago this month that researchers from the Pasteur Institute reported in Science the isolation of a new retrovirus from the lymphoid tissue of a gay Caucasian that appeared to be associated with AIDS-related syndromes.

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Written by  Regina McEnery 
Category: 30 Years of HIV Science: Imagine the Future  | 0  Comments |   Links to this post
May 16, 2013 04:05:00 PMA Notable Report on PDP Challenges
IAVI Report readers might find this paper released by the Global Health Technologies Coalition interesting. It looks at the challenges faced by organizations working on solutions for diseases associated with poverty. The authors find that product development partnerships—a model for addressing public health needs that was recently covered in IAVI Report— play a central role in bringing together resources and the expertise of different sectors involved in related R&D. Yet there remain critical gaps in such efforts, the study finds--many associated with funding, regulatory processes, and the limited capacity for research and manufacturing in developing countries. The paper also looks at possible solutions to the identified obstacles.
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Written by  Unmesh Kher 
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May 12, 2013 06:17:00 AMUtrecht conference focuses on HIV sequence analysis and modeling
It’s probably safe to say that the conference on “HIV Dynamics & Evolution”, in Utrecht, in the Netherlands, was somewhat unusual: It featured a lot of research involving HIV sequence analysis and plenty of mathematical modeling of HIV infection. And yes, a lot of the talks at the conference, which ended yesterday, came with differential equations (don’t worry, I won’t get into that in this post.)
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Written by  Andreas von Bubnoff 
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May 09, 2013 04:34:00 PMCurtains Down for the NEPRC
Check out the special feature on the closing of Harvard's New England Primate Research Center, which opened more than five decades ago and in its heyday was at the forefront of a number of major breakthroughs in AIDS research.
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Written by  Regina McEnery 
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May 02, 2013 07:20:00 PMIgA antibodies are better than IgG at protecting macaques from mucosal challenge
We know that most cases of HIV transmission occur at the mucosal surfaces of the genitals or the rectum (see The Great Barrier, IAVI Report, Mar.-Apr. 2008). What we know less about is the types of antibodies that are best at blocking the virus at those surfaces. Studies have shown that antibodies belonging to a class called IgG1 play a role. But antibodies of another class known as IgA are also common at mucosal surfaces. Now, researchers led by Ruth Ruprecht of Harvard Medical School report for the first time that rectally applied IgA antibodies not only protect primates from rectal challenge with a simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV)/HIV hybrid, or SHIV, but do so better than IgG (AIDS 2013, doi: 10.1097/QAD.0b013e328360eac6).
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Written by  Andreas von Bubnoff 
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April 26, 2013 06:05:00 PMHVTN 505: “A hard blow”
It’s probably a bit of an understatement to say vaccine researchers were disappointed yesterday, when they heard about the discontinuation of HVTN 505, a clinical trial that tested the efficacy of a DNA/Ad5 prime-boost vaccine regimen in about 2,500 people. When the trial was stopped, there was no significant difference in HIV infections between those who received the candidate vaccines and the placebo recipients. Beyond that, there was a—statistically insignificant—trend towards more infections among the vaccinated (see previous blog post by Regina McEnery). “It’s a hard blow,” said Scott Hammer of Columbia University, the principal investigator of the trial.
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Written by  Andreas von Bubnoff 
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April 26, 2013 12:47:00 AMLarge AIDS Vaccine Trial Shudders to a Halt

A large Phase IIb trial testing the safety and efficacy of a DNA/Ad5 prime-boost regimen of two vaccine candidates developed by the Vaccine Research Center (VRC) at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) has discontinued immunizations.

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Written by  Regina McEnery 
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