Final HIV Research Highlights from AIDS 2020
As the 23rd International AIDS Conference
(AIDS 2020: Virtual) drew to a close yesterday,
HIV.gov shared a final interview with Carl
Dieffenbach, Ph.D., director of the Division
of AIDS at NIH’s National Institute of Allergy
and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), about more
of the week’s important HIV research developments.
Among the topics he discussed were:
An important milestone in an HIV vaccine study
and an update on where things stand in that
arena,
A new partnership to expedite development
of globally accessible and affordable HIV
antibody combination products,
NIH’s engagement in the Ending the HIV Epidemic
initiative, and
A look to what’s on the horizon in HIV research
in the year ahead.
Here is additional information on the topics
Dr. Dieffenbach highlighted:
Imbokodo vaccine trial reaches important milestone.
Dr. Dieffenbach reported that this week the
ongoing HIV vaccine efficacy study known as
Imbokodo, or HVTN 705/HPX2008, reached a key
milestone: all the experimental vaccines have
been administered to the trial participants.
Launched in 2017, the study is evaluating
whether an experimental vaccine regimen is
safe and able to prevent HIV among more than
2,600 HIV-negative women between the ages
of 18 to 35 years from five countries in sub-Saharan
Africa: South Africa, Zimbabwe, Mozambique,
Malawi, and Zambia. Women and girls in these
countries are disproportionately affected
by HIV in comparison to men of the same age
group. Read more about Imbokodo. Dr. Dieffenbach
also briefly discussed the other late-stage,
NIH-supported HIV vaccine trial underway:
the Mosaico trial among men who have sex with
men and transgender people in the Americas
and Europe.
New NIH partnership announced around HIV broadly
neutralizing antibodies. Dr. Dieffenbach noted
that a new public-private partnership between
NIH, IAVI, and other collaborators was announced
at the conference yesterday, focused on development
of broadly neutralizing antibodies (bNAbs),
a type of antibody that can block many types
of HIV from entering healthy cells in the
laboratory. Clinical studies evaluating bNAbs
for HIV prevention and treatment are currently
underway. Under the new partnership, the collaborators
will pool their bNAb assets and expertise
to expedite development of an accessible and
affordable combination product specifically
designed to be produced at scale, should bNAbs
be shown to be efficacious for HIV prevention,
and possibly for treatment.
NIH’s role in the Ending the HIV Epidemic
initiative. Observing that Ending the HIV
Epidemic: A Plan for America had been discussed
during several AIDS 2020 sessions, Dr. Dieffenbach
described NIH’s role in supporting the 10-year
initiative to reduce new HIV transmissions
by 90% by 2030. He highlighted NIH’s initial
$11 million investment in implementation science
research conducted by the NIH-supported Centers
for AIDS Research and AIDS Research Centers
in coordination with local partners in many
of the 57 jurisdictions prioritized in phase
1 of the initiative. He also announced that
NIH is continuing their support of that implementation
science research for a second year. Some of
the projects funded in the first year will
be extended and expanded, and there will be
some new areas of emphasis. One of those,
he explained, is exploring how can we improve
communication about pre-exposure prophylaxis
(PrEP) to increase uptake among cisgender
women.
HIV research in the coming year. Dr. Dieffenbach
remarked that in the next year, he hopes to
see findings from HPTN 084, the NIH-sponsored
study of long-acting injectable cabotegravir
among cisgender women. This is the companion
study to HPTN 083, one of the studies he discussed
earlier this week, which found that long-acting
injectable cabotegravir is even more effective
in preventing HIV than daily oral Truvada
among cisgender men who have sex with men
and transgender women who have sex with men.
Another area of activity he is looking ahead
to in the coming year is new research on gene-based
cures for both sickle cell disease and HIV
being performed as part of a new collaboration
with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
