22 MAY VOLUME 16 ISSUE 21

On May 18 1997, United States President Bill Clinton committed to developing an HIV vaccine within 10 years. Nearly 20 years later, we still don’t have one. And every day in South Africa, more than 1,000 people become newly infected. Young women and girls are especially hard-hit by HIV in our country.

In 1995, nine HIV treatment activists joined together to speed the search for an AIDS vaccine.... They focused their advocacy on the research institutions best positioned to drive new breakthroughs, especially the US National Institutes of Health. Two decades later, the movement they started has achieved remarkable success.... But we don’t yet have all the tools we need. That’s why it is dismaying that some members of Congress have chosen this moment to call for scaling back the nation’s investments in HIV research.

In this special issue of VAX, we interviewed five leading women scientists from the US, Australia, and Africa to learn more about their careers and what inspires them to continue battling HIV/AIDS worldwide.

Spurred on by the recent Ebola outbreak, an African Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is being established this year to effectively respond to major epidemics. The need for an African CDC was recognised at the African Union Special Summit on HIV and AIDS, TB, and Malaria in Abuja in July 2013.

The High Court of Malawi has today ruled that subjecting people to mandatory HIV Test is a violation of fundamental human rights....Justice Ivy Kamanga has ruled that Police in Mwanza violated human rights of 11 sex workers who were forced to go for HIV testing after been rounded up from Sangala Leisure Center, [and] condemned the conduct of Mwanza Police Station and Mwanza Hospital personnel...in 2009. The court further recommended a separate action against police and health personnel for award of damages.

Texas lawmakers continue to carry out an ideological campaign against young people’s access to honest information on sex....There is ample evidence the state’s abstinence-only approach to sex education has not been working. In 2010, Texas had the third-highest teen pregnancy rate in the country, fourth-highest teen birthrate, and highest prevalence of repeat teen births. Asked about the questionable efficacy of the abstinence-only program, State Rep. Stuart Spitzer (R) said, “It may not be working well…,but abstinence education is HIV prevention. They are essentially the same thing.”

Genocea Biosciences' in-development vaccine for genital herpes met its goals in a Phase II trial, sending the biotech's shares soaring. The protein treatment, GEN-003, works by galvanizing the body's T and B cells to attack herpes, and, in a 310-patient trial, the vaccine significantly beat out placebo in tamping down viral activity. The trial found no serious adverse events...and no difference in the rate of patient dropouts.

A team led by researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital and the Ragon Institute has found that the most common bacterial community in the genital tract among healthy South Africa women not only is significantly different from that of women in developed countries but also leads to elevated levels of inflammatory proteins. In the May 19 issue of Immunity, the investigators describe finding potential mechanisms by which particular bacterial species induce inflammation and...could increase the risk of HIV infection.

A primary research goal is to find an HIV cure that either clears the virus from an infected person's body or enables HIV-infected individuals to suppress virus levels and replication to extremely low levels without the need for daily ART....In a new Perspective article, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci and colleagues describe how persistent HIV reservoirs form in the human body and why they pose formidable challenges to achieving a cure.

Researchers [at New York University] sought to identify the factors associated with incident HIV infection among a cohort of [600] racially/ethnically and socioeconomically diverse young, gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men. Socioeconomic status is key driver of HIV seroconversion, they concluded.

Girls between ages 11 and 16 continue highly vulnerable, with a total of 909 having been sexually abused in three months, National AIDS Council (NAC) revealed. In its 2015 first quarter report, NAC says 1 855 people have been sexually abused....Of these people, a total of 1,655 sexually abused clients were tested for HIV...According to the report, of the total number of sexually abused people, 136 were men and 1519 were women. One man tested positive while 77 women tested positive.

Now, with a severe outbreak of HIV and hepatitis due to a surge in heroin use in states including Indiana, Kentucky and West Virginia, the question of whether to let federal money support needle exchanges is back. Still, in contrast to a new willingness by state politicians to accept needle exchanges, Congress appears unlikely to overturn the moratorium....

A simple reminder via electronic health records significantly increased HPV vaccine initiation and completion among young women, recent data suggest. “We found that simply alerting patients and providers during an office appointment increased uptake and completion of the HPV vaccine series,” Mack Ruffin, professor of family medicine, University of Michigan Medical School, said in a press release.

About a quarter of targeted pharmacy clients took up HIV-1 testing. Clients seeking care directly at the pharmacy (ie, without a prescription) and those with STI symptoms were more likely to take up HIV-1 testing. Engagement of adult pharmacy clients for HIV-1 screening may identify undiagnosed individuals and offers opportunities for HIV-1 prevention research.

Much research effort is now aimed at understanding what triggers a successful immune response in a minor subset of infected people and how such insights can be harnessed for therapy. This Nature Immunology "Focus on the Immunology of HIV" (http://www.nature.com/ni/focus/hiv/index.html) presents five specially commissioned Reviews....All the Focus articles point out that multiple lines of evidence...suggest that very early events during infection have important consequences for control of this virus.