Dr. Joseph Sonnabend passes away on January 24, 2021. In 1983, Dr. Sonnabend, along with Dr. Mathilde Krim and Michael Callen, founded the AIDS Medical Foundation, which would join forces with Elizabeth Taylor’s National AIDS Research Foundation to form amfAR in 1985.
Even though AIDS has been around for longer than 40 years, June 5 marks the 40th anniversary of the first scientific reporting of identified AIDS cases in the U.S.
A 30-year-old Argentinian woman, diagnosed positive in 2013, appears to be spontaneously cured of HIV, according to a study whose authors include amfAR grantees. After an exhaustive search of 1.5 billion of the woman’s cells, researchers were unable to find any virus that could competently replicate. The woman, named the “Esperanza patient” after her birthplace, is the second person, after Loreen Willenberg, believed to have naturally cleared her infection.
Botswana becomes the first high-burden country to significantly reduce mother-to-child HIV transmission, an important step toward an AIDS-free generation.
amfAR’s TREAT Asia program receives a five-year $14.5 million grant from the U.S. National Institutes of Health, representing the fourth successive round of funding for a partnership between TREAT Asia and the Kirby Institute at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney, Australia. TREAT Asia’s network includes more than 50 research institutions and community organizations in 13 countries across the Asia-Pacific.
At a World AIDS Day event at the White House, President Biden announced the release of an updated National HIV/AIDS Strategy and recommitted the United States to ending AIDS as a public health threat by 2030. The Strategy focuses on four goals: prevent new HIV infections; improve HIV-related health outcomes of people with HIV; reduce HIV-related disparities and health inequities; and achieve integrated, coordinated efforts that address the HIV epidemic among all partners and stakeholders.
Two long-acting injectables are approved by the FDA—Apretude, the first long-acting injectable for PrEP, and Cabenuva, a long-acting HIV treatment.
