As thousands of researchers from around the globe converge on Seattle for a conference on HIV/AIDS, top health officials in the United States are preparing to launch an ambitious new program aimed at eliminating new infections in the U.S. by 2030.
In advance of the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections, or CROI, which opened at the Washington State Convention Center today, Dr. Carl Dieffenbach, who heads AIDS research for the National Institutes of Health, said that the NIH has the money it needs “to jumpstart the program in this fiscal year” and continue it through the next one.
“We are all in,” he said in an interview Sunday, prior to speaking at a workshop hosted by the community advisory board for defeat HIV, a research group based at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. That group, a public-private partnership funded by the NIH, is exploring the use of genetically modified, HIV-resistant blood stem cells as a potential cure for the virus that causes AIDS.
