Px Pulse

In this episode, AVAC’s Jeanne Baron and co-host immunologist Katharine Kripke of AVENIR Health explore why developing a vaccine for HIV is different from other viruses.  Two vaccine researchers, Caltech’s Pamela Bjorkman and IAVI’s Vincent Kioi, lend their expertise.  Learn how HIV has evolved like no other virus that exists today to escape detection by the immune system. Learn why the right target on HIV is so hard to reach and how scientists are tackling it all.

 Linda-Gail Bekker from South Africa’s Desmond Tutu Health Foundation and Lillian Mworeko from the International Community of Women Living with HIV East Africa (ICWEA) join host Jeanne Baron and AVAC’s Executive Director Mitchell Warren to discuss innovative models for scale-up and delivery. Taking the right steps now could mean HIV prevention options fulfill their life-saving, epidemic-ending potential. It will require working faster and more efficiently than ever before. We dive into what lessons the field has learned, what’s still off-track, and the steps advocates, policy-makers, drug makers and funders should each take right now to turn efficacious options into effective choices.

Endpoints are a crucial component in every clinical trial but they are not always well understood, and putting them in context is essential for effective advocacy.  This next installment of the Px Pulse series, Research Fundamentals, which explores key scientific concepts, lays out what endpoints are and why they matter. 

The latest episode of Px Pulse goes behind the scenes of the new HBO movie, The Legend of the Underground. The film documents the lives of AVACer Micheal Ighodaro and other LGBTQ Nigerians as they confront enormous risks to ‘live out loud’. 

The latest episode of Px Pulse takes a deep dive into PEPFAR, The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. AVAC’s former Director of Strategy and Content, Emily Bass, has just published To End a Plague: America’s fight to end AIDS in Africa which documents its pioneering successes and its challenges. 

Findings from two trials on antibody-mediated prevention, the AMP Trials, have been generating discussion since the beginning of the year. The results are complex, and the implications for HIV prevention research are unfolding.

Early results from trials testing cabotegravir as a long-acting injectable PrEP show it was safe and highly effective against HIV. Listen to learn what must come next for CAB-LA to advance HIV prevention alongside oral PrEP and the Dapivirine Vaginal Ring?

After decades of research and advocacy, the ring is now one step closer to becoming available as a discreet, woman-initiated HIV prevention option. 

Whether it’s condoms, a flu shot, oral PrEP or the dapivirine vaginal ring, proven products fall short of 100 percent protection against disease, and there’s a lot to know about how and why an intervention may offer imperfect but still useful protection. This episode is part of a new series on Px Pulse, Research Fundamentals

In this episode of Px Pulse, hear unique perspectives on how COVID-19 and HIV are shaping one another.  Mark Feinberg, CEO of IAVI, and Helen Rees, Executive Director of the Wits Reproductive Health and HIV Institute (Wits RHI), speak to COVID-19 vaccine development.  Sinead Delany-Moretlwe, Director of Research at Wits RHI, Vincent Basajja of the Uganda Virus Research Institute, Jau Nanyondo from Uganda’s Makerere University Walter Reed Project and Philister Adhiambo from the Kenya Medical Research Institute, explain how HIV prevention trials are adapting in the wake of COVID-19. 

AVAC puts a spotlight on HVTN 702. Data show the vaccine tested is safe, but in a major disappointment for the field, vaccinations were stopped early after a scheduled review showed it did not offer protection. In this episode, learn how much there is still be learned from HVTN 702; from data still to be gathered and from strong community engagement. 

With unmet UNAIDS “Fast-Track” targets for ending the epidemic now a reality, the field faces the sobering truth. We’ve been striving towards the 90-90-90 treatment targets without an equal commitment to primary prevention targets.    In this episode of Px Pulse, AVAC’s Emily Bass, lead author of our repot Now What?, talks about AVAC’s blueprint for course-correcting: bold leadership, smart target-setting for HIV prevention research and implementation, and multilayered prevention programs that are centered around people. 

A look at what’s different and what’s the same between F/TDF (Truvada) and F/TAF (Descovy), what’s driving innovation in the proposed trial design, why it's so essential for advocates to engage and more.  

Breaking the Cycle of Transmission, a human-centered design (HCD) project, is shedding new light on how to bring HIV prevention to adolescent girls and young women.

The results of the ECHO trial are out. A much-anticipated study has found no difference in risk among three highly effective contraceptives. But the study also found high HIV infection rates among the women in the study in East and Southern Africa- almost 4 percent. What do the researchers, advocates and the WHO think of the results? 

The ECHO trial (Evidence for Contraceptive options in HIV Outcomes) looked at three highly effective contraceptive methods to determine if one carried a higher risk of acquiring HIV compared to the others. Mixed data from previous observational studies had raised questions about one particularly popular method, known as DMPA-IM. The results of ECHO are due out in June, with stakeholders from both the field of HIV and sexual and reproductive health watching closely. In this episode of Px Pulse, AVAC spoke with two leaders from the ECHO trial team, Dr. Jared Baeten and Dr. Helen Rees, to understand what the trial can and cannot tell us. And you’ll hear leading women’s advocates from several countries where the ECHO trial took place share their demands. Take what you learn forward as the ECHO trial raises the volume on an urgent conversation — how to empower African women around their sexual and reproductive health.

In this episode of Px Pulse, hear DAIDS leader Carl Dieffenbach and colleague Director Sheryl Zwerski address the position of non-systemic strategies of prevention at the January AIDS Research Advisory Committee meeting, where funding priorities were presented. (Non-systemic strategies such as topical microbicides do not provide protection throughout the body.) A major leader in HIV prevention science, South African researcher Linda-Gail Bekker talks about an ideal future pipeline, a research agenda she calls the “science of choice”. And hear AVACer Manju Chatani-Gada's discussion with two young women advocates from Zimbabwe, Maximina Jokonya of Africaid and Audrey Nosenga of Zimbabwe Young Positives. They talk about the limits of prevention today and why more choices will mean greater empowerment.

How will future clinical trials need to be designed as HIV prevention evolves…and how can community engagement become stronger along with it? Check out this episode to hear three fierce voices tackle the questions:  Morenike Giwa-Onaiwu of the Houston HIV Cross-Network Community Advisory Board, Stacey Hannah- AVAC’s Director of Research Engagement &  Jeremiah Johnson,the HIV Project Director for the Treatment Action Group.  Together they explore why this conversation is at a critical moment and how to make the most of it.

The bi-ennial conference on HIV research for prevention, or R4P, is “the” place where HIV prevention science, policy & advocacy come together to share insights and identify what’s next for the field. In this episode of Px Pulse, Ntando Yola, a veteran advocate and part of the Coalition to Accelerate and Support Prevention Research (CASPR) shares his advocacy priorities for R4P and beyond. But first, AVAC’s Emily Bass talks about the just-launched 2018 annual report from AVAC, this year titled No Prevention, No End! This year’s state of the field report looks at today’s prevention crisis and offers context, analysis and strategy to turn that crisis around.

In this episode of Px Pulse we take a look at one issue that was center-stage at the recent AIDS 2018 conference in Amsterdam: Preventing new HIV infections. Hear Brad Jones of Weill Cornell Medical College pose a basic question about T cells and what his research could teach us about the immune system. Advocate Dorothy Okatch of the NGO Young 1ove sizes up the challenges for prevention in her country Botswana, where gains in treatment have been lauded. But first, we talk to the head of PEPFAR (the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief), Ambassador Deborah Birx, who oversees one of the biggest programs for HIV/AIDS in the world.