Protection from HIV: Targeted Intervention Strategies

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This proposal requests support for a Keystone Symposia meeting entitled Protection from HIV: Targeted Intervention Strategies, organized by Mario Roederer, Carolyn Williamson and Robin Shattock, which will be held in Whistler, British Columbia, Canada from March 20 - 25, 2011. Biological efforts to prevent HIV infection center on four independent approaches: inducing adaptive immune responses through vaccination, augmenting innate responses, using peri-exposure prophylactic drug therapy, and developing microbicides and/or recombinant antiviral microbial products. While all four of these approaches have promise, they still require significant optimization and further clinical trials. Indeed, successful prevention of HIV infection will likely require a combination of these approaches. Such development efforts require a better understanding of viral and immunological events at the site of transmission. This meeting will have a focus on mucosal immunology as well as on the interplay between the virus and the innate and adaptive immune responses, particularly during the acute phase of the infection. Leading experts in the fields will discuss recent scientific advances in these varied approaches to preventing infection, and present data from recent clinical trials testing their efficacy. The program for this meeting is highly likely to attract a wide variety of investigators, many of whom might not otherwise interact. The focus on HIV vaccines in general provides an umbrella under which speakers from different areas of research (e.g., infectious diseases, vaccinology, genetics and genomics, epidemiology, mucosal biology, immunology, and drug discovery) are being brought together in an environment that is highly conducive to cross-talk. Moreover, opportunities for interdisciplinary interactions will be significantly enhanced by the concurrent meeting on HIV Evolution, Genomics, and Pathogenesis, which will share a keynote address and two plenary sessions with this meeting. Project Narrative: Prevention remains the cornerstone of controlling, and eventually eradicating, the HIV epidemic. A targeted, integrated intervention strategy is required to achieve this goal. Successful prevention of HIV infection will require a combination of approaches. The Keystone Symposia meeting on Protection from HIV: Targeted Intervention Strategies differs from other meetings in that it provides a forum to bring together all the latest findings in the field of HIV biomedical prevention research.