Visit the new AVAC web site: www.avac.org. The site contains AVAC’s comprehensive coverage of the full range of biomedical HIV prevention interventions in an easy-to-use format that is searchable by intervention and by topic like policy, ethics and community involvement in research.

The first International Symposium on Natural Immunity to HIV (ISNIH) will be held in Winnipeg, Canada from November 15 - 17, 2009. The conference is sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the University of Manitoba and the Public Health Agency of Canada. For more information, please visit the ISNIH web site (http://www.icid.com/isnih/index.php) and see the below press release.

The Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise and the OCTAVE Project are organizing a workshop to explore immunological concepts relevant to the analysis of the large-scale HIV vaccine efficacy trial, RV144, which showed modest protection against HIV in humans. This workshop will be held as part of the AAVP annual meeting in Kampala, Uganda on 16 December 2009. For more information, please see the attached document.

To support the Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise’s efforts to raise the visibility and participation in the HIV vaccine field of Young and Early Career Investigators, the CAVD recognizes the young or early career investigators who have made significant contributions to research conducted within the CAVD. For more information, please click here.

Researchers, funders policy makers and advocates from around the world gathered in Paris for today’s opening of AIDS Vaccine 2009, the world’s leading scientific conference on AIDS vaccine research.

The International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) announced today that it has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Ragon Institute to accelerate the development of new and promising AIDS vaccine candidates for testing

Results of the Thai HIV vaccine clinical trial of the “prime-boost” combination of ALVAC-HIV vaccine and AIDSVAC B/E vaccine demonstrate that a safe and effective AIDS vaccine is an achievable goal. For more information, please see the Enterprise statement below.

The minutes from the September 17 and 18 meeting of the Host Genetics and HIV Diversity Working Group can be found below. Recommendations from this working group will comprise a portion of the 2010 Scientific Strategic Plan for HIV vaccine development.

MSD Wellcome Trust Hilleman Laboratories is a first of its kind research and development joint venture with a not-for-profit mission focusing on developing affordable vaccines to prevent diseases that commonly affect low-income countries. For more information, please see the press release below.

Eric Hunter, Ph.D., Georgia Research Alliance eminent scholar and co-director, Center for AIDS Research at Emory University will chair AIDS Vaccine 2010.