Interview with Ernest Hopkins and Bob Grant about Pre-exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP)

by Miguel Gomez, AIDS.gov Director

Recently I sat down with Ernest Hopkins, Legislative Director at the San Francisco AIDS Foundation , and Bob Grant, M.D.,M.P.H. , Senior Investigator at the Gladstone Institute at University of California San Francisco , to talk about pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). Here is a video from our conversation.

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.

National HIV Prevention Conference Delivers Call to Action

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

I just returned from the National HIV Prevention Conference in Atlanta where a sense of excitement and renewed enthusiasm for fighting the HIV/AIDS pandemic were buoyed by the new opportunities that the Obama administration brings. Conversely, there was also an underlying current of anxiety about how our country’s economic situation is affecting HIV prevention services. First, let’s start with the positive.

Testing HIV Drugs as Prevention

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

Dr. Carl Dieffenbach, PhD

Last year, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that the number of annual new HIV infections in the United States is actually 40% higher than previously estimated. This means that more than 56,000 Americans are infected with HIV every year despite public education efforts on how to avoid getting infected. Addressing the global HIV/AIDS pandemic is critical, but it’s clear that we need to re-examine our approaches and figure out additional ways to control and curtail the epidemic here in the United States.

At the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the NIH, we stand at the forefront of the nation’s HIV prevention research efforts. One of our goals is to develop new scientific strategies to prevent HIV transmission. We've had our share of successes and disappointments, like all areas of science, but we remain optimistic and are committed to ending the HIV/AIDS epidemic.