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AVAC in the News

  • The Only HIV Vaccine in Advanced Trials Has Failed. What Now?

    The only vaccine against HIV still being tested in late-stage clinical trials has proved ineffective, its manufacturer announced on Wednesday, another disappointment in a field long beset by failure. Dozens of HIV vaccine candidates have been tested and discarded over the past few decades. The latest defeat sets progress toward a vaccine back by three to five years, experts said. Still, other options in early-stage trials may yet turn out to provide a powerful bulwark against HIV.

    January 18, 2023
    HIV Vaccine
    New York Times

  • Another HIV Vaccine Fails in Large Trial

    Another large trial has been discontinued after Johnson & Johnson’s experimental HIV vaccine, which uses the same technology as the company’s COVID-19 vaccine, was shown to be safe but did not provide protection against HIV acquisition. Today’s announcement by the National Institutes of Health adds to a long string of disappointments in HIV vaccine research.

    January 18, 2023
    HIV Vaccine
    POZ Magazine

  • HIV Vaccine Being Developed by Johnson & Johnson Fails Clinical Trial

    Yet another experimental HIV vaccine has failed. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases reported Wednesday that a Phase 3 clinical trial of a vaccine was stopped because the vaccine was ineffective at preventing HIV infection. The vaccine was being developed by Janssen, the vaccine division of Johnson & Johnson.

    January 18, 2023
    HIV Vaccine
    STAT

  • J&J Ends Large HIV Vaccine Trial in Latest Setback for Field

    Johnson & Johnson halted a big trial of its experimental HIV vaccine in the Americas and Europe, a disappointment for hopes of battling the global infectious disease after a similar form of the shot failed earlier in a study in Africa. The Mosaico study ended early after an independent data and safety monitoring board found it didn’t significantly reduce the risk of HIV infection, the company said Wednesday in a statement.

    January 18, 2023
    HIV Vaccine
    Bloomberg

  • This HIV Prevention Drug Could Change the Game

    A new, long-lasting drug could be a game-changer for preventing HIV infections, experts say. Advocates are hopeful that those who need it most in low- and middle-income countries will not have to wait for it as long as they have for previous HIV drugs. But questions remain about access and price. The drug is called cabotegravir and is delivered as a shot once every other month. In clinical trials, it did a better job at preventing infection than another option — a pill taken once a day.

    December 1, 2022
    PrEP
    VOA

  • HIV Prevention Advocate Talks Ending the Epidemic

    Mitchell Warren, Executive Director of AVAC, talks HIV prevention, access to medicine, treatment and ending the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

    December 1, 2022
    General
    ABC News

  • In-Depth: What Should Behaviour Change Efforts Look Like in the PrEP Era?

    HIV prevention pills are becoming more widely available in South Africa and the country is set to soon start piloting the use of an HIV prevention injection and vaginal ring. But merely having these pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) tools available in clinics and other places does not mean people will use them. This dynamic is nothing new.

    December 1, 2022
    PrEP
    Spotlight

  • ‘It’s Always Fear-Based’: Why Sexual Health Projects Should Switch the Focus To Pleasure

    In the village in Kenya where Swiry Nyar Kano (not her real name) grew up, sex and diversity weren’t talked about much. The topics didn’t come up in conversation with her parents, and at school she was taught about human anatomy and “sexual immorality”, and told that homosexuality was a sin. “I grew up in society where sex was about having babies and that was about it,” says the social media influencer. “Sexuality was never mentioned. Nobody ever talked about it so I started seeking answers for myself.”

    November 22, 2022
    General
    The Guardian

  • Remembering Dawn Smith, Who Helped Prove PrEP’s Efficacy and Guided Its Use

    PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis) has become such a central part of HIV prevention that it can be hard to remember that in the decade before its 2012 approval by the US Food and Drug Administration, “PrEP was a code word for unethical research.” So says Mitchell Warren, longtime head of the HIV prevention advocacy group AVAC, recalling how, in the 2000s, early trials to determine PrEP’s efficacy fell apart in Cameroon, Nigeria, and Thailand amid accusations from activists that researchers were not treating trial subjects ethically—for instance, by not necessarily guaranteeing lifetime HIV tre

    November 22, 2022
    PrEP
    TheBody

  • A New Shot Guards Against HIV, but Access for Africans Is Uncertain

    For seven years, a daily pill has been available in South Africa to protect people from getting HIV. But when Victoria Makhandule, a community health worker, counsels the young women in her township about the medication, they tell her it doesn’t work for them. These young women are among the most vulnerable in the world to HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, but they say the daily pills, known as PrEP, bring their own challenges. The women may spend an unexpected night away from home and miss a dose, or forget for a day or two.

    September 27, 2022
    PrEP
    The New York Times

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