HIV Reservoirs Workshop: Straight Line from Vienna IAS to Next Saint Martin Think Tank
Toulon, IL, December 07, 2011 -- Scientific research has led to remarkable advances in the last 25 years since HIV was first described. Today, HIV-infected patients can live longer and better than 15 years ago, when highly active antiretroviral therapy was discovered. However, treatment has to be initiated early enough and patients have to strictly adhere to these regimens. Side effects as less frequent than in the past, but long-term toxicities are completely unknown. A deadly disease has, therefore, been transformed into a chronic manageable condition, largely due to the efforts of basic scientists and clinicians. Nevertheless, the HIV pandemic keeps growing, with more than 7,000 new cases of infection each day, and several parts of the world do not have access to care nor to drugs. Consequently, it is more than ever urgently needed to:
-find a way to decrease the spread of the epidemics;
-find new approaches able to induce HIV control without permanent drug taking;
-find a way to target residual HIV disease in viral reservoirs and eradicate HIV.
Since 1995, our group has worked on acute HIV infection, then HIV persistence in reservoirs. In 2003, we founded the first HIV Workshop on HIV Persistence and HIV Reservoirs in Saint Martin. This high level basic science workshop attracted mainly lab researchers who intensely discussed their discoveries.
The objectives of the Workshop are:
• To promote state-of-the-art research on HIV latency, establishment and c of HIV reservoirs;
• To attract the world’s leading scientists on HIV reservoirs and strategies to control them, for state-of-the-art lectures and presentations of new, yet unpublished results;
• To explore the directions to take to reach a ‘cure’, and the ways to translate cutting edge research on HIV reservoirs into patients benefits;
• To increase interactions between basic scientists, clinicians and other stakeholders in the global response against HIV and AIDS.
The strategies currently being investigated to target HIV reservoirs may hold the key to a control or a cure in the future. It is widely known that current antiretroviral therapy cannot eradicate HIV from the body because the virus remains in some cells in a non-replicating, latent stage. The persistence of latent HIV reservoirs in different body compartments is one of the main barriers to HIV eradication and the biggest challenge of the Century.
New scientific results relevant to tackling HIV persistence were presented at the second workshop in 2005, more clinical results were shown at the following editions in 2007 and 2009.
Whether eradicating the virus (sterilizing cure) or achieving long-term remission in the absence of continued therapy (functional cure) will be possible one day remains currently unknown. The categories of the workshop sessions span from animal models, identifying the locations of HIV reservoirs in the body, the mechanisms of viral persistence, to potential therapeutic interventions and methods to evaluate their impact.
In 2007 and 2009 we were joined in our fight against HIV reservoirs by institutional support, both from the NIH (American National Institute of Health) and the ANRS (French Agency for AIDS Research). The workshop was also accredited by the University of Massachusetts School of Medicine.
In 2010 we attended the International AIDS Society (IAS) workshop on HIV reservoirs in Vienna. IAS interest in HIV reservoirs was for us recognition of our long run commitment in the field.
The 2011 HIV reservoirs workshop will be held in December in Saint Martin.
About us:
Reference Workshop on HIV Reservoirs: http://www.hiv-workshop.com
Contact:
Vincent kapoulos
AVPS
Toulon, IL
494616340
lafeuillade@orange.fr
http://www.hiv-workshop.com
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