The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) School of Public Health has been awarded a total of $11.5 million from the National Institutes of Health to explore new ways to identify adolescents and young adults infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and link them to medical care.

The two new grants are for UAB’s leadership and coordination of the Adolescent Medicine Trials Network for HIV/AIDS Intervention (ATN), a research network in 15 sites in the United States and Puerto Rico working to curb the epidemic through prevention, testing and treatment for youth ages 12 to 24. Both grants are from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD); one grant is $4.67 million, and the other is $6.83 million funded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

“HIV infects more than 30 million people globally, and projections show that at least one-half of all new infections each year are happening in youth under age 25. In America, one-third of all new HIV infections are in those under age 30,” says Craig Wilson, M.D., a professor of epidemiology and pediatrics in the UAB School of Public Health and principal investigator of the ATN’s scientific leadership group and coordination center.

“The ATN develops and tests promising behavioral and therapeutic strategies for HIV-infected youth, and prevention strategies for youth who engage in risky behavior,” Wilson says. “These two new awards recognize our efforts, and build on the community-based infrastructure and coalitions already developed by the ATN in 13 cities.

“We need to figure out ways to work with young people to help youth protect themselves and get needed treatment.”

Wilson and ATN are partnering with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to work within local health departments and community coalitions to increase HIV testing in youth. When HIV is detected early, treatments are more effective and help lower the probability of spreading the disease to others.

The new grants will focus on two initiatives:

- Linkage to HIV care for youth and expanded testing. Expansion is under way in city, county and statewide HIV testing programs in response to rising U.S infection rates. UAB, the ATN and other partners are developing and evaluating linkage-to-care strategies designed to answer many questions, such as how best to find undiagnosed HIV-positive groups and engage them in appropriate care.

- Expanded HIV testing in Latino communities. Among the fastest-growing segments of the U.S. HIV epidemic are Latinos. A new project will build on the existing ATN network and community coalitions to expand HIV testing in at-risk Latinos, including exploring the unique cultural aspects of this community and its medical preferences. The overall goal is to find more effective AIDS prevention and treatment strategies, and remove barriers to HIV testing.

Source
UAB School of Public Health

Terrence Higgins Trust with Age Concern & Help the Aged is launching a survey today to find out the needs and concerns of people living with HIV who are aged over 50.

The findings of the research, titled 50Plus, will be made available to services for both older people, and people with HIV, to help them develop appropriate support. Online and paper questionnaires will be distributed and can be filled in until January 4th, when the survey closes.

The questionnaire asks a series of questions about the participant’s life, hopes and concerns. It’s completely anonymous and there is a prize draw for two people, randomly drawn, who will each get £100 of shopping vouchers.

Lisa Power, Head of Policy at Terrence Higgins Trust said “Currently, we know we could be doing more for people over 50 with HIV, whether someone is newly diagnosed or has been living with the virus for decades. People need support in various ways and we want to ensure that service changes are based on the genuine needs of people over 50 with HIV, not on someone’s best guess. We hope to get as many people as possible filling the survey in.”

The research is funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and is being managed by MBARC (incorporting Michael Bell Associates), who have a track record of research for people with HIV, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender people and people seeking asylum.

To find out more, please visit here.

If you’d like to participate, go straight here.

Source
Terrence Higgins Trust

A very close and detailed study of how the most robust antibodies work to block the HIV virus as it seeks entry into healthy cells has revealed a new direction for researchers hoping to design an effective vaccine.

“Our study clearly showed that we’ve been overlooking a very important component of antibody function,” says S. Munir Alam, Ph.D., an associate professor of medicine at Duke University Medical Center and lead author of the paper appearing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Alam, a member of the Duke Human Vaccine Institute and study senior author Bing Chen, Ph.D., assistant professor of pediatrics, Harvard Medical School and Children’s Hospital Boston, studied two potentially powerful antibodies against HIV, 2F5 and 4E10. Both of these are rare, broadly neutralizing antibodies, meaning that they can block a number of different strains of the HIV virus. They accomplish that by binding to the “Achilles heel” of the virus - the so-called outer coat membrane proximal region - a part of the outer protein coating next to the viral membrane that opens up and is exposed to the antibodies for just a few minutes during the process of cell fusion and infection.

But the problem for infection control is that such powerful antibodies are rare in HIV infection, and current experimental vaccines have been unable to generate such antibodies. In addition, the window of opportunity for such antibodies to act is very narrow.

“The target region on the virus is only open for a few minutes - maybe 15 minutes or less,” says Alam. “Unless the antibody is very close by and ready to home in on it, it won’t work. That means our goal has to be the creation of a vaccine that can induce a whole lot more of these antibodies and have them ready to go at the earliest moment of infection.”

“Fortunately, our study gave us new information that will help us accomplish this goal,” says Chen.

The 2F5 and 4E10 antibodies have unusually long, loopy protein segments that are hydrophobic, meaning that they are attracted to lipids. The researchers found that successful docking of the antibody to the HIV outer coat membrane region required antibody attachment to HIV’s membrane, which contains lipid.

“This two-step mechanism, not previously appreciated, might extend to antibodies that protect against other viruses,” says co-author Stephen Harrison, Ph.D., of Harvard Medical School, Children’s Hospital Boston, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

The research team is already working on designing a vaccine that incorporates a lipid component. “The demonstration of the role of virion lipid reactivity in the overall function of these neutralizing antibodies has provided key insights into what the immune system may need to see to make such antibodies”, says co-author and Vaccine Institute Director Barton Haynes. “New vaccine designs trials based on these observations are now ongoing in animals.”

The study was funded by a Collaboration for AIDS Vaccine Discovery grant to Duke and Harvard from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and grants from the National Institutes of Health.

Colleagues from Duke who contributed to the study include Moses Dennison, Hua-Xin Liao, Ruijan Zhang and Shi-Mao Xia. Additional coauthors include Marco Morelli and Sophia Rits-Volloch, from Children’s Hospital Boston and Li Sun, from Xiamen Amoytop Biotech Company, Ltd., China.

Source: Michelle Gailiun

Duke University Medical Center