*EPF412 07/10/2003
HIV/AIDS Breakthroughs to be Revealed, Reviewed at Paris Meeting
(International AIDS Society meeting set for July 13-16) (710)

By Charlene Porter
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- An estimated 6,000 HIV/AIDS specialists from around the world will convene in Paris July 13 for the year's largest scientific and medical conference on the disease. The International AIDS Society (IAS) Conference on HIV Pathogenesis and Treatment is taking place 20 years after the first discovery of the virus HIV-1.

"The goal of the conference is to share the latest advances in HIV research and provide a unique platform for the international community to translate the science into action," according to a press statement from the IAS and ANRS, the French National Agency for Research on AIDS, the meeting's co-sponsor.

A "significant amount of new information" on treatments, access to treatment, and the results of antiretroviral drug trials will be unveiled at the conference, according to Michel Kazatchkine, conference co-chair and ANRS director. Kazatchkine and other prominent figures in the field previewed the conference in a July 3 telephone briefing.

"What I think will be particularly important at this conference is that we will highlight a number of very hot issues of basic and clinical science," said Kazatchkine. "We will have an open debate about these hot issues" in hopes of resolving conflicting findings that are puzzling researchers.

"I think on the whole the sessions of the controversies and the debates will be more informative for future directions" of research, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases, who also participated in the briefing.

Fauci will deliver one of the significant lectures of the meeting, providing an overview of the research and discoveries of the past 20 years. He said the two decades are marked by "exciting science in the face of one of the most perplexing and problematic public health challenges that we've had in our history."

Fauci said that one of the significant discoveries in HIV/AIDS history was the very recognition that a new disease had emerged as physicians began to see clusters of similar opportunistic infections occurring in restricted groups. That realization set researchers on a course to discover the type of virus that caused the disease, its complex nature, and its ability to invade the body's cells.

"Perhaps the greatest triumph is in the area of therapy," said Fauci, citing discoveries of antiretroviral drugs that inhibit or stop the multiplication of the virus, and protease inhibitors that prevent replication of the virus.

Considered one of the world's foremost HIV/AIDS researchers, Fauci said he also considers disease education and behavioral modification programs milestones in the 20 year history of AIDS science.

Kazatchkine looks outside the laboratory as he marks the significant developments in the history of the epidemic. Only when the "considerable impact" of the disease became apparent in Africa in the 1990s did the world begin to recognize the tremendous scope and devastating potential of the disease, he said. Mobilization of a global effort to stop HIV/AIDS and reverse its damage in the developing world has been another important milestone that came in recognition of the disease's potential.

The efforts of the last several years to launch more aggressive counter-disease strategies in the developing world have given rise to a new kind of science, Kazatchkine said. He describes it as the "science of the access to treatment" and it has introduced a new array of complex problems: setting prices of drugs in the developing world, delivering them, and dealing with social problems that can develop when treatment does become more accessible.

Despite the achievements in dealing with AIDS cited by these two researchers, and the many more that may be discussed in the upcoming Paris meeting, Fauci remains keenly aware of the efforts that remain ahead. "There is still a considerable way to go from the scientific standpoint before we get to the level where we would feel comfortable that we truly have had the kind of impact on this disease, this terrible pandemic, that we must have," Fauci said.

The National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services are scientific collaborators in the IAS meeting.

(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)

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