OCT-18-2011 The October 18, 2011 meeting sponsored by the Forum was designed to facilitate consensus on issues with the choice of control arm in HCV trials and was attended by representatives from regulatory agencies (US, EMA, Health Canada), NIH, academia, pharmaceutical companies, and patient advocates. 

OCT-17-2011   The October 17, 2011 meeting entitled "HCV Drug Access for People with Bleeding Disorders" was the first in a series of meetings that will try and address issues associated with providing access to, if indicated, combination interferon-free experimental direct acting antivirals (DAAs).

The meeting was sponsored by the Forum, and was attended by representatives from regulatory agencies, academia, hemophilia treatment centers, non-profits associated with database management for those affected with bleeding and blood clotting disorders, community medical practitioners, patient advocates and pharmaceutical companies.

SEP-22-11 The Forum for Collaborative HIV Research hosted a special ceremony on September 22, 2011 in Washington to honor Dr. Anthony Fauci, recipient of the 2011 C. Everett Koop HIV/AIDS Public Health Leadership Award. This ceremony was held in conjunction with a Mini-HIV/AIDS Summit on Capitol Hill. Marking the 30th Anniversary of the beginning of the HIV/AIDS crisis, this half-day symposium brought together many of the nation’s scientists, clinicians, public health leaders and advocates to (1) highlight progress in the ‘world’ of science and (2) focus on the challenges of bringing that progress to fruition in the ‘world’ of clinical practice.

AUG-19-11 The Forum for Collaborative HIV Research has been tasked by our collaborators in the public health community, including the US Food and Drug Administration, to convene an open public meeting to address safety issues that may surround the introduction of biomedical approaches to prevent HIV infection. Recent data from the iPrEx, Partners PrEP and CDC's TDF2 studies support a conclusion that pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) with antiretrovirals may be effective at preventing transmission of infection in otherwise healthy, vulnerable individuals upon exposure to HIV. This important finding may lead to scale-up, broad use of PrEP and, potentially, approval of a PrEP indication.

JUL-17-11 The Forum for Collaborative HIV Research co-organized a satellite session with AVAC & EATG during the IAS 2011 Conference. This session is intended to illustrate and discuss issues in development of large scaled community based prevention pilots. We foresee the workshop serving as a first step in the development of a consensus statement on the need to ramp up efforts to use ARV-based combination prevention (such as test and treat, mircrobicdes, and PrEP) for community-level control of HIV infection. Such efforts require consultation and coordination among industry, governments, international agencies, research institutes, and community groups.

MAR-30-11 The Sixth HCV Drug Development Advisory Group Meeting: Issues in Clinical Trial Design with DAAs was held to discuss a number of topics including issues in deep sequencing technologies and its possible clinical utility; development of a HCV drug resistance table and chart to facilitate drug resistance monitoring; a proposal for new clinical trial related definitions and nomenclature; issues in DAA combination trials; considerations for trials in HIV/HCV co-infected patients and in liver transplant patients; and ethical and feasibility issues in conducting trials in countries where new DAAs are approved or available.

DEC-6-10 A public meeting on HCV drug development was held Monday, December 6, 2010, in Washington, DC.