The 21st edition of the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections thawed the chilly climes with encouraging news on several fronts

Vol. 18, No. 1 - 2014

It’s déjà vu all over again, as American baseball star Yogi Berra once said. In 2012, I left my post as managing editor of this publication to have a baby. And although I won’t regale you with stories of my incredibly wonderful daughter, let’s just say I’m completely smitten! Now, after a two-year hiatus, I am temporarily back at IAVI Report as a contributing editor.

During my time away, the publication was in the very capable hands of Unmesh Kher, who has now taken his considerable writing and editing skills to another organization. Other changes have also occurred. After seven years as a senior science writer, Andreas von Bubnoff also departed to take on other exciting new projects.

While IAVI Report undergoes a bit of a changing of the guard, we’ve put together a great issue with a little, or actually a lot of help from our friends.

The first issue of the year is always dominated by coverage from two of the biggest conferences of the year—the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) and the Keystone Symposium on HIV vaccines. Richard Jefferys of the Treatment Action Group, who is not a stranger to anyone who reads about HIV vaccine research, has contributed extensive coverage on the substantial progress on HIV prevention and cure research that was reported at CROI in March, and Yegor Voronin of the Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise kindly agreed to write an update from the HIV Vaccines: Adaptive Immunity and Beyond symposium, also held in March. Together these articles provide an excellent round up of the current state of HIV prevention and cure efforts.

Also in this issue, we pay tribute to Reinhard Kurth, a renowned German retrovirologist and AIDS vaccine researcher, who passed away in February.

There is also a short article examining the alarming increase in rates of HIV infection occurring in the Middle East and North Africa, and a news story detailing the passage of new anti-homosexuality legislation in Uganda, the latest in a string of countries to pass laws criminalizing homosexuality. In a future issue, IAVI Report will investigate how these laws are affecting the work of organizations doing or funding research in these countries.

While the contributors may have changed, I trust you will find this issue as informative and wide-ranging as ever, and we can all look forward to the new IAVI Report team and their continuing unparalleled coverage of HIV vaccine research.

—Kristen Jill Kresge

New anti-homosexuality laws raise international concerns

Distinguished retrovirologist and calming German voice during AIDS crisis years

Researchers showcase efforts to apply basic immunological principles to the design of antibody-based vaccine candidates