15th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) (Highlights‪)‬

This year, the 15th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) occurred with much less fanfare than in recent years. Enthusiasm for this year's meeting was diminished largely because of the ups and downs the research community has experienced with existing drugs and with the lack of newly developed ones to fight HIV. Also disappointing was the news from Merck that its vaccine, MRKAd5, was unsuccessful at stopping HIV in negative, high-risk volunteers (Abstract #88LB). The result of this slowdown in drug development was to shift the focus of the meeting back to the laboratory and to rethinking how the virus works inside the human body. The conference was different in yet another way. Although most presentations at CROI have traditionally been devoted to clinical science, this time there were more sessions that focused on the biomedical prevention of HIV/AIDS. Researchers are beginning to realize that while there will always be a need to alleviate the health consequences of HIV infection, there is also a need for alternate ways to stop or control the virus. As reported in the Winter 2007/2008 issue of RITA!, entitled Biomedical Prevention of HIV/AIDS: What We Can Do to Control This Epidemic, Dr. Kevin De Cock, director of the World Health Organization's HIV/AIDS Division, reminded us that we cannot stop the epidemic by using medicine alone because most HIV-infected people around the globe do not have access to anti-HIV treatment and because such treatment is moving slowly from industrialized to developing nations. His most important message was that we cannot separate prevention from treatment, a view that was supported by the many discussions at CROI surrounding this issue.