Three Hundred Scientists Meet in Miami to Work on a HIV Cure
Miami, Florida, December 3, 2015 (PRWEB) December 03, 2015 -- According to WHO, HIV worldwide chronically infects 35 million individuals. Despite major advances in antiretroviral therapy over the last 2 decades, HIV persists in a latent state and infection rekindles each time antiretrovirals are stopped. This is explained by the persistence despite therapy of cells that act as viral reservoirs.
Currently, only one patient has been cured from HIV infection, the Berlin patient, who received a bone marrow transplant from a donor resistant to HIV due to a mutation on a gene coding for a co-receptor needed by HIV to infect cells (N Engl J Med. 2009 Feb 12;360(7):692-8. doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa0802905).
However, several groups have described patients who received antiretroviral therapy at the time of acute infection and remained aviremic when antiretrovirals were stopped, a situation called HIV remission (PLoS Pathog. 2013 Mar;9(3):e1003211. doi: 10.1371/journal.ppat.1003211).
It is important to put forward research for HIV cure or remission as life-long antiretroviral therapy for 35 million people brings problems of access and cost.
The 7th International Workshop on HIV Persistence during Therapy will take place in Miami, Fl, on December 8-11, 2015 at the Marriott Biscayne Bay hotel. Three hundred participants are registered and will discuss their research on the topics of HIV reservoirs and HIV cure. Science and presentation of new, yet unpublished data, will drive this event.
The first day of the workshop will hold a session on the three Martin Delaney Collaboratories, the research programs initiated by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). It will be followed by an opening lecture given by Carl Dieffenbach, Director of the NIAID.
During the 3 following days, the sessions will go from basic science to clinical applications (program attached). Each time, a key opinion leader will summarize the field knowledge, followed by oral presentation selected from abstracts submitted by the participants.
"We expect this workshop to be a turning point for HIV reservoirs knowledge and the search for a cure", Doctor Alain Lafeuillade said, one of the 4 members of the Steering Committee together with David Margolis (Chapel Hill), Mario Stevenson (Miami) and Karl Salzwedel (Bethesda)
Media are welcome to meet and interview Scientists during the workshop. Please call the contact number given below.
The 7th International Workshop on HIV Persistence during Therapy is supported by the NIH (National Institutes of Health), the NIAID, the AmFar (American Foundation for AIDS Research) and the ANRS (French Agency for AIDS Research). It is also organized with the help of the University of Miami and the University of Massachusetts.
Press contact:
Alain Lafeuillade, MD, member of the Steering Committee
Ph: +33 7 82513683
ALAIN LAFEUILLADE, General Hospital, http://www.hiv-persistence.com, +33 782513683, [email protected]
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