International AIDS Scientists Band Together

A team of international scientists say the prospects for finding a cure for AIDS in the near future are realistic, after unveiling a roadmap to cure the disease in Washington overnight. Major investments in science have resulted in the worldwide availability of over 20 anti-HIV drugs. Despite these successes, these therapies have limitations. They do not eradicate HIV, requiring people to remain on expensive and potentially toxic drugs for life. The new roadmap to cure is intent on ending this suffering.

In what organisers are calling a first, scientists have come up with a coordinated plan to tackle AIDS since the disease was discovered 31 years ago. Over the past two years the International AIDS Society – IAS – has convened a group of international experts to develop a roadmap for research towards an HIV cure. Published online in an abridged form tomorrow, Friday July 20, in Nature Reviews Immunology, Towards an HIV Cure identifies seven important priority areas for basic, translational and clinical research and maps out a path for future research collaboration and funding opportunities.(

Approximately 34 million people around the world are HIV positive, and in 2010 more than 21,000 Australians were living with HIV infection :: Read the full article »»»»