World AIDS Day Message
Scientific Director,
CIHR Institute of Infection and Immunity
December 1, 2008
The discovery of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) was recognized this year with the awarding of the Nobel Prize in Medicine. This was a very worthy choice given that HIV causes AIDS, a disease that has affected the lives of millions of people around the world. Since the identification of the HIV retrovirus 25 years ago by Dr. Luc Montagnier in France and Dr. Robert Gallo in the United States, research has made major advances in effective control of AIDS through anti-retroviral therapy.
As a result, AIDS has become more of a chronic disease than terminal illness but hopes for an effective treatment have been pinned on the development of a vaccine that can do more than simply treat HIV/AIDS – a vaccine that can eradicate the virus, simply and permanently. At no time during the AIDS pandemic has an HIV vaccine seemed so tantalizingly close, as clinical trials get underway – and yet so frustratingly far off, as those trials fail.
Efforts to design and test vaccines have met with little success, however, due largely to a lack of knowledge about the biology of the virus – how it cripples and evades our immune defences. Despite these setbacks, there is a renewed commitment throughout the world to find an effective vaccine.
Here in Canada, the multi-year Canadian HIV Vaccine Initiative, a partnership with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is an indication of our country's dedication to eradicating HIV/AIDS. In the United States, the National Institutes of Health has also made a renewed commitment to discovery research to find new approaches towards developing an HIV vaccine. And throughout the world, countries are uniting to strengthen their individual efforts through the Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise, led by CIHR's founding President, Dr. Alan Bernstein. It is a collaboration built on more than simply hope – it is built on the true belief that, one day, we will have a vaccine that will eradicate HIV/AIDS in all parts of the world.
The Government of Canada is committed to doing everything possible to contain the virus and improve the quality of life for all affected people. As a major partner in the Federal Initiative to Address HIV/AIDS in Canada, CIHR, through its Institute of Infection and Immunity, is taking the lead in focusing on HIV/AIDS research.
As a result of our support, Canadian researchers are making important contributions in understanding and preventing HIV. For instance, Time Magazine recently named Dr. Stephen Moses' study of male circumcision as a way of reducing HIV among young men as one of the top medical breakthroughs of 2007. Dr. Frank Plummer and his research group have successfully identified women in Kenya who appear to be immune to HIV, despite repeated exposure. These studies suggest that protective immunity could form the basis for a successful vaccine. And we have recently renewed our commitment to the CIHR Clinical Trials Network (CTN) in HIV/AIDS for another five years following a rigorous peer-review.
To focus our commitment we have worked with our partners to develop the Canadian Institutes of Health Research HIV/AIDS Research Initiative Strategic Plan 2008-2013. This plan outlines six key areas of research focus over the next five years: health systems, services and policy; resilience, vulnerability and determinants of health; prevention technologies and interventions; drug development, toxicities and resistance; pathogenesis; and issues of co-infection and co-morbidity.
With these six areas of focus and with the involvement of researchers and members of the HIV/AIDS community, Canada will continue to contribute to global efforts that will, I truly believe, ultimately lead to the eradication of HIV/AIDS.
World AIDS Day is an important opportunity – an opportunity to look back, at how far we have come over the past 25 years in understanding, preventing and treating HIV/AIDS; and an opportunity to look forward, to the day we will have a vaccine that is successful in eradicating this global scourge.
