World AIDS Day, which is officially observed internationally on December 1 every year, is an opportunity to reflect on the progress made in the fight against HIV. This year’s theme, Collective Action to Sustain and Accelerate Progress, aligns closely with WRAIR’s mission to protect defense health and global health through international collaboration and innovation.
MHRP Director COL Julie Ake and Dr. Sandhya Vasan, director of the HJF component of MHRP, conducted a fireside chat with Dr. Baden to share his perspectives on evolving opportunities and challenges in HIV research with an audience of clinicians, researchers, program staff and other stakeholders committed to ending the HIV epidemic. With a career spanning more than 30 years, Dr. Baden has been involved with HIV vaccine development for over 20 years, and he’s currently professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, the Vice President for Clinical Research at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Director of Infectious Diseases at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
“To me, HIV was the entrée into understanding immune failure and its consequences, the ability to control it, and then actually stop it if we can get the drugs to the people who need it in a sustainable way,” said Dr. Baden of the immunological discoveries stemming from HIV research that have informed other fields such as cancer immunotherapy and organ transplants.
Dr. Baden also called out the need for continuing collaboration, across both borders and scientific specialties. “Infectious disease is a global problem. It may manifest differently in different communities or different parts of the world, or different contexts of nutrition and other social factors, but a bug is a bug.” As for the future, he’s excited by the potential of recently emerging technologies, like mRNA platforms, saying, “its versatility and the ability to apply it to better health is left to us.”
MHRP’s World AIDS Day event also provided the opportunity to share with stakeholders the program highlights from 2024. For more than 35 years, WRAIR’s U.S. Military HIV Research Program, or MHRP, has been at the forefront of advancing scientific research and discovery to develop medical products for our miliary service people and the world. MHRP has also Implementing global health prevention and treatment programs alongside allied militaries and their communities under the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) since 2005. This year MHRP led the advancement of bispecific antibody platforms for prevention and treatment, helped launch a new collaborative global cure initiative, and continued expansion of international epidemiology studies. View the 2024 highlight video here: https://youtu.be/2qEwbXH7Z6A?si=wKHeMrYVutH9bt2G
| Date Taken: | 12.23.2024 |
| Date Posted: | 12.23.2024 15:37 |
| Story ID: | 488273 |
| Location: | SILVER SPRING, MARYLAND, US |
| Web Views: | 69 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, WRAIR World AIDS Day Event 2024: Accelerating HIV Research Progress Through International Partnerships, by Jamie Livengood, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
