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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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April 26, 2013 12:41:00 AMA brief history of HVTN 505

When the trial that came to be known as HVTN 505 began in 2009, it had a single endpoint: a decrease in the set point viral load in volunteers who became HIV infected despite vaccination (see Vaccine Briefs, IAVI Report, July-Aug. 2009). Adding protection against infection as an additional endpoint in 2011 resulted in a significant change in enrollment in the HVTN 505 trial. The trial was originally designed to enroll 1,350 circumcised, HIV-uninfected men who have sex with men (MSM) or transgendered women who have sex with men with no pre-existing immunity to adenovirus serotype 5 (Ad5). That is the commonly circulating strain of the cold virus that was used as to construct the vector bearing one of the two vaccine candidates.

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Written by  Regina McEnery 
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April 24, 2013 09:16:00 PMBush's War on AIDS
As the country grapples with US$85 billion in across-the-board spending cuts, set in motion after a US Congressional committee failed to pass bipartisan federal budget legislation, it is worth remembering how legislators from both sides of the aisle just a decade ago launched one of the largest US humanitarian efforts since the Marshall Plan.
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Written by  Regina McEnery 
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April 18, 2013 06:57:00 PMStudy explores biological properties of transmitted founder viruses
Most sexually transmitted HIV infections are the result of just one transmitted virus, but researchers are still wondering what, if anything, makes such transmitted founder viruses so special. Now, a team led by Beatrice Hahn at the University of Pennsylvania has found that transmitted founder viruses have biological properties that give them an advantage when initiating a new infection (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 2013, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1304288110).
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Written by  Andreas von Bubnoff 
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April 09, 2013 08:26:00 PMFrom the Rally: Invest in American innovation
Through the rhetorical din of the April 8 Rally for Research (see blog), a couple of statistics—shared by Rockefeller University President Marc Tessier-Lavigne—sounded like a tocsin: Annual health-care costs have climbed to reach more than US$8,600 per person over the past decade. But the government’s annual investments in the US National Institutes of Health have hovered at a paltry $100 per person—about 80 times less. 
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Written by  Regina McEnery 
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