The latest issue of IAVI Report is online. Among other things, it features articles on new developments in HIV cure research, recent studies that show promise but also possible pitfalls of using adenovirus vectors in HIV vaccine candidates, and the funding crisis at the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.   

Just days before the International AIDS Society’s (IAS’s) 6th Conference on HIV Pathogenesis, Treatment and Prevention gets underway in Rome, new results were released from two trials showing that oral pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP)—the administration of antiretrovirals (ARVs) in an effort to prevent HIV infection—is an effective way to reduce the risk of HIV infection among heterosexual men and women.

Considering how many options have been added recently to the HIV prevention arsenal, is it time to start talking about an endgame?

In advance of today’s World AIDS Vaccine Day, a May 16 symposium sponsored by the New York Academy of Sciences (NYAS) provided an array of talks that largely focused on the progress and challenges in developing an AIDS vaccine. Michael Watson, who leads the global immunization policy group at Sanofi-Pasteur, noted during his opening that HIV scientists have made great strides in recent years, but that we “still don’t fully understand the enemy and how our bodies react to that enemy.”

Today, researchers at Family Health International (FHI) announced that they would be closing a trial known as FEM-PrEP that was designed to determine whether oral administration of the antiretroviral (ARV) drug Truvada was able to prevent HIV infection—a strategy known as pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP)—ahead of schedule. The trial will be closed early because the trial’s independent data monitoring committee determined during an interim review of the data that it would be highly unlikely that the trial would be able to demonstrate the effectiveness of Truvada even if it continued until its originally planned conclusion.