Gladstone Institute Of Virology And Immunology

Scientists in San Francisco are stepping up the fight against AIDS with a new center dedicated to finding a cure for the disease. The Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology, which officially opens today, is a 4-year, $44-million project bringing together 45 scientists devoted to finding a cure for AIDS. Scientists will work with UC San Francisco's existing AIDS program.

Scientists in San Francisco are stepping up the fight against AIDS with a new center dedicated to finding a cure for the disease. The Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology, which officially opens today, is a 4-year, $44-million project bringing together 45 scientists devoted to finding a cure for AIDS. Scientists will work with UC San Francisco's existing AIDS program.

Revving up the immune system has the paradoxical effect of boosting production of the AIDS virus in people who carry it and may also make the uninfected more susceptible to HIV, new research suggests. A study found a temporary surge in the human immunodeficiency virus in the blood when infected people received a booster shot of the tetanus vaccine. That shows that when the immune system powers up to fight an infection, the AIDS virus kicks into high gear as well. The study, led by Dr.

Taking a daily pill containing either one or two anti-HIV drugs can reduce transmission of the virus by as much as three-quarters among heterosexual couples, two studies in Africa have shown — a breakthrough finding that promises to intensify a new focus on AIDS prevention. The results were so compelling that the larger study was halted early and the drugs given to all the participants, researchers said Wednesday. In the absence of a vaccine to protect against the virus, this new approach, termed pre-exposure prophylaxis, may be the best hope for slowing or even halting the spread of the deadly plague throughout the developing world.

Tuesday's announcement that a once-daily pill containing two anti- HIV drugs could reduce the risk of infection by more than 70% in gay men stirred great excitement in the AIDS-prevention world because most previous efforts have failed so abysmally. "This is a tremendous biomedical, biological success," said Mitchell Warren, executive director of the New York-based AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition. "But we are going to have huge challenges in finding out how to translate it into some sort of public health impact.

Dr. Merle Sande, an infectious-disease specialist who helped turn San Francisco General Hospital into a model for AIDS and HIV care in the early years of the health crisis and later devoted himself to building an infrastructure to prevent and treat AIDS in Africa, died Nov. 14 of multiple myeloma at his home in Seattle. He was 68.

In a finding that is being widely hailed as the first major prevention breakthrough in the AIDS era, researchers have shown that taking a single daily pill containing two HIV drugs can reduce risk of contracting the virus by an average of 44% ? and by more than 70% if the subjects take most of their pills. The study involved nearly 2,500 high-risk gay men, but experts hope that the results will be applicable to other populations considered at risk for contracting the virus. Several studies are already underway to determine if that is the case.

As the U.S. Food and Drug Administrationweighs approval of a radical new method of AIDS prevention - a prescription pill taken once a day - advocates say the results of experimental trials in sub-Saharan Africa argue strongly for the drug's adoption in the United States. The pill was developed to treat people already infected with HIV. But studies published Wednesday by the New England Journal of Medicine demonstrate that it can also prevent heterosexual transmission of HIV, the most common mode of contagion in Africa.

As New York City public health officials Tuesday attempted to track down the sexual contacts of a man with what has been termed a "super-strain" of HIV, other AIDS experts questioned why such an uproar has emerged over a single case.

Breakthroughs in technology, increased funding and higher profits are spurring a boom in vaccine discovery and development that could save or improve the lives of millions of people by attacking such scourges as cancer and malaria. Three new vaccines arrived on the market in 2006, the most in a single year. They include vaccines for the human papillomavirus, linked to cervical cancer, and for rotavirus, which causes severe diarrhea and kills 600,000 children globally each year.

A quarter-century after the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, the rapid pace of scientific discovery has slowed to a crawl. The early years of the epidemic were a sprint, as researchers isolated the virus that causes AIDS, developed rapid tests for the virus and found drugs that could block its replication -- culminating 10 years ago in the introduction of drug cocktails that made long-term survival possible.