HVAD 2022: 25 years of advocacy and progress

May 18, 2022

Today is HIV Vaccine Awareness Day (HVAD), and AVAC has a full line-up of resources, presentations, perspectives pieces, webinars and partners to feature. This year, we’re focused on advocacy to generate new hypotheses, fresh ideas and novel strategies to what is tested, and how. It’s time to come together, consolidate what we’ve learned and coordinate a strategy for HIV vaccine research into the future.

Read

HIV vaccines in 2022: where to from here? A new Viewpoint in the Journal of the IAS, authored by AVAC’s Mitchell Warren and Stacey Hannah with IAVI’s Kundai Chinyenze, Imperial College’s Robin Shattock, Desmond Tutu Health Foundation and APHA’s Ntando Yola discusses the way forward for HIV vaccine development, in the context of recent trials and new initiatives.

quote from JIAS article

Today, IAVI shared news of another Phase I trial using mRNA-based technology to test a new HIV vaccine candidate. Check out our updated snapshot of Phase 1 mRNA HIV Vaccine Trials that are underway.

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The lack of efficacy in recent vaccine efficacy trials has prompted researchers to look for trial designs that can more quickly ask and answer key questions, inform decisions about which vaccine candidates to advance into larger trials and, hopefully, accelerate the discovery of viable vaccine candidates. Check out AVAC’s backgrounder on experimental medicine vaccine trials (EMVTs).

Listen

AVAC’s Jeanne Baron is joined by Avenir Health’s Katharine Kripke, Caltech’s Pamela Bjorkman and IAVI’s Vincent Muturi-Kioi to explore some of the key scientific challenges an HIV vaccine will have to overcome in another installment of the Px Pulse podcast series Research Fundamentals.

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Participate

Don’t forget to join AVAC for its three-part webinar series kicking off today chaired by long-time HIV vaccine advocate and AVAC co-founder Bill Snow and moderated by AVAC’s Director of Research Engagement Stacey Hannah:

  • Platforms & Pipelines: The miracle of mRNA: What’s possible beyond SARS-CoV-2—understanding mRNA, its history, and potential challenges for HIV vaccines.
    Wednesday May 18, 2022
    Recording and Slides: YouTube / Nina Russell’s Slides / Bart Haynes Slides
  • Prospects: What have we learned, why it matters and what it means? Understanding recent results in HIV vaccine research and implications for the future.
    Tuesday May 31, 2022
    Recording: YouTube

Thanks to the efforts of tens of thousands of volunteers, researchers and advocates, the world has learned infinitely more about the human immune system, vaccine science and HIV than was known when HIV Vaccine Awareness Day was first commemorated twenty-five years ago, in 1997. We take this moment to recognize the tremendous progress made collectively over the years and to recommit to accelerating the ethical development and equitable delivery of an HIV vaccine.