AIDS

This morning, at the 23rd International AIDS Conference, our collaborator Martina Penazzato provided a plenary speech on pediatric HIV. We met with her and asked for her thoughts on what urgent action we need to take to end AIDS in children.

Read more.

Penta has been invited to run a one-day session at the Republican Hospital of Infectious Diseases, St Petersburg conference on ‘Actual problems of HIV Infection: Mother and Child’ on Tuesday 15^th September. The Penta session What’s new for children and women living with HIV: interactive clinical day with Penta will look at new data on ART in pregnancy and newborns, resistance and recommendations for 1st,

Last Patient Last Visit (LPLV) completed for the Penta 17 Strategy for Maintenance of HIV suppression with integrase inhibitor + darunavir/ritonavir in children (SMILE) trial.

The Penta sponsored trial, SMILE, has completed its last patient last visit. This exciting news comes to us following the closure of patient enrolment for SMILE last year, where all participants recruited were followed up for a minimum of 48 weeks until the last participant enrolled reached 48 weeks of follow-up on 11 August 2020.

Data from the ongoing P1093 and ODYSSEY (PENTA20) studies have led to the successful approval of ViiV Healthcare’s submission to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of the adult formulation for children weighing ≥20kg and dolutegravir (DTG) dispersible tablets for children of 4 weeks of age and older.

The approval of adult 50mg DTG for use for children weighing ≥20kg allows for immediate access to adult DTG formulation procured and available in many countries for the majority of children living with HIV.

Join the 6th Workshop on Children and Adolescents HIV-exposed and Uninfected (HEU) at 3pm (CEST) on 1st July 2020.

The workshop is part of the pre-conference programme of the International AIDS virtual conference 2020. This is a unique opportunity to focus on the paediatric population and explore health issues and developmental disparities experienced by these patients.
Among speakers, our friend and collaborator Martina Penazzato, will provide an update on the emerging research and policies for HEU children.

The annual Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) will be held from March 8 to 11 in Boston, Massachusetts.

CROI brings together top basic, translational, and clinical researchers from around the world to share the latest studies, important developments, and best research methods in the ongoing battle against HIV/AIDS and related infectious diseases.

Details of the presentations related to projects and studies in which Penta is involved taking place at the conference are shown below.

The 10th International Workshop on HIV & Women is in Boston on 6 – 7 March 2020, just prior to CROI.

This is an outstanding opportunity for health care providers, researchers, government, industry and community representatives to discuss, debate, and increase their knowledge on HIV and its burden on women.

The format of the meeting enables attendees to learn from experts in the field of HIV and related health,

Authors: Morris SE, Dziobek-Garrett L, Yates AJ and the EPIICAL consortium

Published in: BMC Bioinformatics 2020;21(1):52

Background HIV/AIDS is responsible for the deaths of one million people every year. Although mathematical modeling has provided many insights into the dynamics of HIV infection, there is still a lack of accessible tools for researchers unfamiliar with modeling techniques to apply them to their own clinical data.

Just published – data on T & B cell memory and T cell function in early-treated children in the Journal of Immunology and AIDS.
Antiretroviral treatment (if started at an early stage) is able to reduce the amount of HIV virus in a child’s body. EPIICAL is studying the characteristics of the immune response and the amount of HIV virus,

Today we celebrate Human’s Right Day: this year’s theme is “Youth Standing Up for Human Rights”.
School HIV-prevention campaigns in Africa are often designed to frighten children. However, we believe this should be done differently. By providing children with information about HIV we can help prevent fear and ensure children are educated.

Peer-support groups play an important role in providing children and adolescents with information they need about HIV.

Picturing Health has created the first video in a three part series of adolescent films about growing up with HIV. This series of short films tackles the issue of dealing with disclosure and the impact a child being told they are HIV positive.

Check out the video here: https://www.picturinghealth.org/finding-out/

There are also an additional 13 films from Picturing Health covering some of the main areas of paediatric HIV care,

The theme of this year’s World AIDS Day, which we commemorate today, is “Communities make the difference“. Today we highlight the role of communities in ensuring that AIDS remains at the top of the political agenda. Therefore, continuing to respect human rights and enable decision-makers and implementers to be held accountable.

At Penta, we strongly believe in fighting paediatric AIDS. First established in 1991 as a collaboration between paediatric HIV centers in Europe,

Today, November 20^th, is Universal Children’s Day. This year, we are celebrating in Cape Town, South Africa, where the EPIICAL 3rd General Assembly is being hosted. Universal Children’s Day is dedicated to the rights of the child, with one key aspect being the right for every child to access the highest standard of health. However, at the end of 2018, there were 37.9 million people living with HIV worldwide and,

The world’s largest open scientific conference on HIV and AIDS will be held in Mexico City in July 2019. IAS 2019 will take place at the Centro Citibanamex on 21-24 July 2019. Held every two years, the IAS Conference on HIV Science is a unique forum for scientists, clinicians, public health experts and community leaders to examine the latest research developments in HIV science and explore how to realistically apply and implement that knowledge to address the epidemic.

Seattle is gearing up for the 2019 edition of CROI next week. Held at Washington State Convention Center on 4th-7th March, the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections is an important event in the Penta calendar, and in particular for the EPIICAL consortium, as it is an opportunity for members to discuss the latest developments pertaining to the project. Included on the agenda,

The many challenges of developing drugs appropriately formulated for children are compounded by a series of market factors that make these efforts costly and complex, discouraging drug manufacturers – especially generic drug manufacturers – from prioritizing investments in new paediatric treatment options.

In alignment with the Rome Action Plan, the IAS Industry Liaison Forum (ILF) developed a policy brief exploring the opportunities of advance procurement as a pragmatic approach for the largest ARV buyers – most notably national governments (particularly the Government of South Africa),

Although the number of new HIV infections has continued to decline globally, and the overall level of HIV treatment is high, progress is far slower than what is required to reach the 2020 milestone of less than 500,000 new infections.
Children remain a vulnerable population, with 2017 witnessing 180,000 new cases of children becoming infected with HIV – a long way off the proposed target, set by the United Nations,