Looking Ahead: NIAID’s Future HIV/AIDS Therapeutics Priorities

By Carl W. Dieffenbach, Ph.D., Director of NIAID's Division of AIDS

Since the 1980s when the HIV/AIDS epidemic was first recognized, NIAID-supported clinical research has helped to save millions of lives and played a key role in defining the standard of care for treating HIV infection. This blog post describes what we are seeking for the next wave of HIV/AIDS therapeutic approaches. Specifically, we have identified the following three research priorities: 1) finding a cure for HIV-infected individuals; 2) developing therapeutic strategies for preventing and treating tuberculosis (TB) and hepatitis C in HIV-infected individuals and individuals at high risk for co- infection; and 3) addressing the long-term consequences of treatment of HIV infection.

Future Priorities for NIAID’s HIV Prevention Research

By Carl W. Dieffenbach, Ph.D., Director of NIAID's Division of AIDS

As we begin to discuss the restructuring of NIAID's clinical trials networks, let us first focus on the Institute's HIV prevention research agenda. Developing new biomedical tools that can safely and effectively prevent HIV acquisition and transmission is critical to addressing the global HIV/AIDS pandemic. Currently, we are exploring several promising HIV prevention strategies that, if proven successful, could have a significant impact on reducing the incidence of new infections. These strategies include microbicides — gels, foams, creams, and other formulations designed to prevent sexual transmission of HIV — and pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), attempting to block HIV infection by providing antiretroviral medicines to people who are not infected with HIV but who are at high risk for infection. HIV vaccines are also a major focus of our prevention research efforts, but we will discuss that area specifically in an upcoming blog post.

Restructuring NIAID's HIV/AIDS Clinical Trials Networks

By Carl W. Dieffenbach, Ph.D., Director of NIAID Division of AIDS

Over the next several weeks, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) will post a series of entries here on AIDS.gov related to planning for the future of NIAID’s HIV/AIDS clinical trial networks. The awards supporting the six current HIV/AIDS networks are set to expire in 2013 and 2014.

Building on the success of the current infrastructure, NIAID is looking to expand the scope of the network’s current activities to include the treatment and prevention of other infectious diseases of significance to people who are infected with HIV or are at risk for infection both domestically and globally, namely tuberculosis, hepatitis, and malaria. Additionally, we are looking for ways to increase collaboration across the networks, create transparent mechanisms for network leadership to solicit and support ideas from the research community, and develop a means for external researchers to tap into the clinical trial infrastructure and capacity that the network system provides. Finally, it is our goal to have each of the networks establish a means of designing and implementing a cross-network agenda to address research questions related to specific populations.

Each of our upcoming blog posts will focus on specific aspects of the network restructuring in which we are seeking input from the broader research and HIV/AIDS communities. Specifically, the entries will address:

• NIAID’s clinical research priority areas, namely prevention, therapeutics and vaccines;
• the structure of the new networks; and
• the relationship between network leadership groups and clinical research sites.

Read the transcript

Pursuing a “Cure” for HIV/AIDS – Two Distinct Approaches

By Carl W. Dieffenbach, Ph.D., Director of NIAID Division of AIDS

Dr. Carl Dieffenbach, PhD

Contrary to what you may have heard or read on the Internet, there is currently no cure for HIV/AIDS. While some say that there may never be a cure, I believe there is reason for hope. That’s because some of our best scientists are working on two distinct approaches to finding a cure for HIV/AIDS, both of which are starting to gain traction within the HIV/AIDS research community.

When people think of the word “cure,” some imagine a magic elixir that can completely wipe out a disease or illness from a sick person. Ideally for HIV-infected patients, it could be a drug or therapy that eliminates the entire virus from the body. In the mid-1990s, we learned that when taken properly, highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) can dramatically reduce a person’s viral load (the amount of HIV in the blood) to undetectable levels. Initially, there was hope that this would be curative. However, once patients stopped taking the drugs, the virus growth rebounded and the virus began to spread throughout the body again. We now know why this occurs: HIV has the ability to hide within certain places in the body (called “reservoirs”) and lay dormant for many years. To find a cure, we need to identify and eliminate all these HIV reservoirs. While this is no doubt a very difficult goal to achieve, scientists are working toward uncovering HIV’s favorite hiding places.

Keeping it Real: Understanding the Changing Landscape of HIV/AIDS Clinical Trials Communication

Earlier this month we presented at a symposium of the HIV/AIDS Network Coordination Project's (HANC) Communications Working Group. We asked Amy Ragsdale, HANC Special Projects Coordinator to tell us a little more about the Working Group and how they are using new media.

The HIV/AIDS Network Coordination (HANC) works with the six HIV/AIDS clinical trials networks funded by the Division of AIDS (DAIDS) of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) with the intent of creating a more integrated, collaborative and flexible research structure. The networks (ACTG, HPTN , HVTN, IMPAACT, INSIGHT, and MTN) are an affiliated group of national and international medical research institutions and investigators that conduct clinical HIV/AIDS research to develop safe and effective drugs, prevention strategies and HIV vaccines.