6 Results
Measuring Innovation: Laboratory Infrastructure to Deliver Essential HIV Clinical Trial Results
HIV clinical trials network laboratory functions will continue to evolve to align with scientific priorities and research approaches.
Sequencing of Congo Mpox Reports Highlights New Transmission Patterns in Country
Laboratory analysis in the Republic of Congo showed mpox was affecting people in parts of the country where it has not been historically. The findings point to increases in human-to-human transmission across the border with the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo, where a large outbreak was declared a public health emergency of international concern.
Defining the Goals of HIV Science Through 2034
Discovery, Development and Delivery for an Increasingly Interconnected HIV Landscape
By Carl Dieffenbach, Ph.D., director, Division of AIDS, NIAID
We envision an HIV research enterprise that follows a logical evolution in addressing new scientific priorities informed by previous research progress. We will fund our next networks to align with updated research goals to take us through the end of 2034. Our capacity must reflect an increasing interdependence across clinical practice areas and public health contexts.
Bringing HIV Study Protocols to Life with Representative, High-Quality Research
The HIV clinical trials network sites have made tremendous contributions to NIH’s scientific priorities by offering direct access to and consultation with populations most affected by HIV globally, and by delivering high-quality clinical research with strong connections to trusted community outreach platforms. Future networks will need to maintain core strengths of current models while expanding capacity in areas vital to further scientific progress. These include operations that inform pandemic responses and extending our reach within communities impacted by HIV, including populations historically underrepresented in clinical research.
Experimental Ebola Vaccines Found Safe and Capable of Producing Immune Responses in Healthy Adults
Ebola viruses cause devastating disease in people, resulting in severe and often fatal hemorrhagic fever called Ebola virus disease. Of the four species of Ebola viruses that cause disease in people, Zaire ebolavirus (EBOV) and Sudan ebolavirus (SUDV) have caused more than 30 known outbreaks in the last century, killing more than half of those with the disease. Scientists at NIAID’s Vaccine Research Center (VRC) developed novel vaccines to combat these viruses, which were advanced to clinical trials in response to the 2014-2016 Ebola epidemic in the West African countries of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. In two phase 1/1b trials conducted in the United States and Uganda, the researchers evaluated combinations of the experimental vaccines against Ebola disease in healthy adults, finding them safe, tolerable, and capable of producing immune responses. Comparisons between the different vaccine regimens revealed important data on how the vaccines could be administered in routine and outbreak settings. The results of the trials were published last week in npj Vaccines.
NIAID’s VRC, S. Africa’s Afrigen Kick Off Vaccine-Sharing Efforts
A team of vaccine production experts from South Africa recently finished training with NIAID Vaccine Research Center scientists. Their objective: to globally produce vaccines against a list of troubling infectious diseases.
