NEWS
- TAG at 20: Early Campaigns
Reforming NIH AIDS Research, Boosting the Budget, and Revitalizing the Basic Science of HIV Infection
On January 22, 2012, the Treatment Action Group marked its twentieth anniversary. Over the past two decades, we have helped to accelerate a historically unprecedented therapeutic revolution: the introduction of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) in 1995–96, followed by its rollout to nearly seven million people worldwide. TAGline will publish a series of articles this year to examine the role of AIDS activism—and its evolving strategies—in these accomplishments, and how these experiences can help us build the long road towards the cure still ahead.
- The Odyssey of Therapeutic Vaccines for HIV
In the earliest days after the discovery of HIV in the mid-1980s, uncertainty reigned regarding how the immune system responded to the virus. Initially, it was thought that the time between HIV infection and the development of severe immunodeficiency and disease represented a period of viral inactivity or latency. In this context, it seemed logical to propose that perhaps vaccination could be used to bolster immune response to HIV and thus delay or even prevent the development of illness. But the first efforts toward this goal quickly mired therapeutic vaccine research in controversy, casting an initial pall across the field that was compounded by the failure of any candidate to show significant efficacy. Additionally, the scientific rationale for the approach evolved as more was learned about the pathogenesis of HIV infection and the types of immune responses that may be effective—and ineffective—at controlling the virus. After a period in which enthusiasm regarding the prospects for therapeutic vaccines waned, the recent resurgence in interest in research aiming to cure HIV infection has offered new reasons to pursue their development.
- What You Don’t Know, You Can Sell
Merck’s Cavalier Attitude Towards the Welfare of HIV/HCV Coinfected Patients
In places where access to antiretroviral therapy is widespread, people living with HIV are now dying from a common and curable coinfection: hepatitis C virus (HCV). HIV increases the risk for, and accelerates the rate of, liver disease from hepatitis C. Pegylated interferon and ribavirin, medications used to treat HCV, are less effective in people with HIV than in their HCV-monoinfected counterparts. In 2011, the first hepatitis C protease inhibitors, Merck’s boceprevir and Vertex’s telaprevir, were approved based on trials in people with hepatitis C monoinfection. Both drugs are being studied in coinfected people, thanks to pressure from the international HIV/HCV community and encouragement from regulatory agencies.
- Does Obama’s 2013 Budget Herald the End of PEPFAR?
Devastating Funding Proposal Undermines the Global Fight Against AIDS
A sense of disbelief washed over the global AIDS community last month when President Obama unveiled his fiscal year 2013 budget proposal to cut $563 million from the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) program. Cuts of this magnitude could lead to half a million people being denied lifesaving treatment, and countless preventable new infections. Shock and dismay have since given way to frustration; some feel the administration is signaling that an era of U.S. leadership in the global fight against AIDS may be coming to an end.
- Childhood TB Advocacy Picks Up Steam
The neglected crisis of childhood tuberculosis (TB) is finally garnering some long-overdue attention. TAG hosted Forgotten But Not Gone: Childhood TB, a federal advocacy dialogue and strategy session in Washington, D.C. this January. We brought together over 50 researchers, clinicians, implementers, and global advocates from the TB, HIV, and maternal- and child-health communities to advance the discussion.
Open Letter to Cepheid on Pricing of GeneXpert
16 April 2012 - We write to follow up on our previous communications regarding the price of Cepheid’s GeneXpert MTB/RIF machines and cartridges....We remain deeply disappointed that despite unprecedented momentum and global rollout of the Xpert MTB/RIF system, prices have failed to budge either for the machines or for the cartridges.
Open letter to the Medicines Control Council and Ministry of Health on urgent need for compassionate use of bedaquiline for XDR-TB and pre-XDR-TB in South Africa
11 April 201 - We urge you to take action to expedite compassionate use access for bedaquiline (TMC207) for persons with drug-resistant strains of tuberculosis in South Africa. Access to improved medicines to treat extensively drug resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) and pre-XDR-TB is essential given the enormous public health threat that the drug-resistant TB epidemic exemplifies.
PRESS RELEASE: Children with Drug-Resistant TB Make Up the Most Neglected Patient Population
— Treatment Action Group Analysis Finds Global TB R&D Rose by Just 2% from 2009: Less than One-Third of the Global Need —
Thursday, 22 March 2012 - In recognition of World Tuberculosis day on March 24th, Treatment Action Group (TAG) calls for the re-focusing of attention on the tremendous burden that tuberculosis (TB) plays around the world. TB is a disease of the poor – more than 80% of TB cases worldwide arise in the global south. According to the World Health Organization, nearly 4,000 people die every day because of TB. There were 8.8 million people newly diagnosed with TB in 2010, including 1.1 million cases among people with HIV – which, coupled with the emergence of drug resistant TB, including some untreatable strains – creates a deadly synergy. Despite this reality, investment in TB research has remained very low compared to the worldwide burden.
Letter to President Obama on Proposed FY 2013 Budget Cut to PEPFAR
March 1, 2012 - Dear Mr. President, As representatives of organizations that advocate for an evidence-based and robust response to global AIDS, we respond to your fiscal year 2013 budget request for the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR)—the flagship bilateral AIDS program—with shock and dismay. A proposed reduction of more than 10 percent to this lifesaving program is completely inconsistent with your bold leadership statement on World AIDS Day, with its commitment to scale up HIV treatment to an additional two million people by 2013 and prevention of mother to child transmission interventions for an addition 1.5 million pregnant women, to move forward to realize the goal of an AIDS-free generation. A $546 million proposed reduction in the PEPFAR budget will clearly translate into lives lost, scores of preventable infections, and services denied to orphans and vulnerable children.
Obama’s Global, Domestic & HIV Research FY 2013 Budget Backslides on Existing Commitments
Proposed Cuts to President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) Would Prevent 500,000 People from Starting on Life-saving HIV Treatment
— President’s 2013 Budget Weakens U.S. Leadership on Fighting HIV Globally and Domestically —
NEW YORK, NY —Thursday, 16 February 2012. Treatment Action Group (TAG) is deeply disappointed by President Obama’s proposed cuts to PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) and bilateral TB funds, freezing of NIH (National Institutes of Health) research as well as the insufficient attention to the worsening domestic AIDS crisis in the administration's fiscal year 2013 budget plan. “This senselessly harsh budget will directly contribute to millions of preventable illnesses and deaths among people living with HIV, hepatitis C, and TB in the U.S. and around the world.” said Mark Harrington, Executive Director of TAG, “Why does President Obama want to turn his back on the most effective, life-saving global health and development program in history?"
Letter to Secretary Clinton on the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria
7 February 2012 - Dear Secretary Clinton, We write to ask for your leadership in ensuring The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria is “open for new business,” saving lives through expanding programming in 2012. We ask that you convene an emergency donor meeting in advance of the July International AIDS Conference to re-invigorate the U.S. three-year commitment of $4 billion and use it to leverage commitments from other donors to the Global Fund. We also urge you and President Obama to use your political leadership — and the bipartisan support for The Global Fund — to achieve the U.S. pledge in 2013 without sacrificing any funding from essential bilateral AIDS, TB, and Malaria programs, which would undermine the game changing targets you and the president set at the end of last year.
Report and Commentary from the Fifth International Workshop on HIV Persistence During Therapy
February 2012 - Inaugurated in 2003, the bi-annual International Workshop on HIV Persistence during Therapy (aka “the persistence workshop”) is the brainchild of researcher Alain Lafeuillade. The meeting presaged the recent explosion of interest in pursuing a cure for HIV infection, a pursuit many had considered quixotic until the case of Timothy Brown came to light in 2008. As has been extensively documented, Brown’s apparent cure resulted from a debilitating odyssey of treatments required for the grim diagnosis of acute myelogenous leukemia, enhanced with a mix of insight and good fortune on the part of his doctor Gero Hütter, who was able to provide a stem cell transplant from a donor lacking the major HIV co-receptor CCR5. The sea change wrought by this fortuitous “proof of concept” was much in evidence at the 2011 persistence workshop this past December; the tentative forays into basic science that were once emblematic of the field are now mixed together with more ambitious plans for advancing ideas into the clinic. Perhaps most strikingly, two large pharmaceutical companies—Gilead and Janssen/Tibotec—described their use of industrial scale screening to search for compounds that are active against latent HIV. This represents an unprecedented expansion of efforts once confined to under-resourced academic labs.
Letter to Sangamo BioSciences on Development Plan for Gene Therapy SB-728-T
January 12, 2012 - Our concern is that while your press release highlights Sangamo BioSciences commitment to using zinc finger nuclease technology to address “unmet medical needs," it is silent on the status of further research for SB-728-T in the HIV-positive population with arguably the greatest unmet medical need: those who experience poor immune reconstitution despite suppression of HIV replication by antiretroviral therapy (ART).
Forgotten But Not Gone: Childhood TB Advocacy Meeting
On Thursday January 5, 2012, TAG held a Childhood TB Federal Advocacy Meeting in Washington, D.C. The meeting was co-sponsored by STOP TB, RESULTS/ACTION, the Center for Global Health Policy and the American Thoracic Society (ATS). Click here for presentation slides and advocacy links.
Letter Opposing a Proposed Low-dose Stavudine Trial
14 December 2011
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Gates, We write as people with HIV and community activists with serious and unresolved concerns about the proposed clinical trial comparing stavudine at 20 mg to tenofovir. Although we are broadly very supportive of dose optimisation strategies, we do not support this trial; we do not think that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation should support it; nor do we think it should proceed. Several of us have discussed this with your representatives both formally and informally over the past months. Those of us who met with your representatives on 19 July 2011 at the International AIDS Society conference in Rome received no response to the concerns we raised. We summarise our objections as follows:
TAG's 2011 Year-End Update
In this issue:
Demand Global Fund to Reverse Cancellation of New Programming
2 December, 2011 - The cancellation by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria of all new programming until 2014 is unacceptable. This decision will cost lives and cripple international efforts to deliver on health-related goals, breaking promises made to some of the world’s most vulnerable people, and punishing the Global Fund's success of the last ten years.
Let’s Redouble our Commitment to Cure AIDS!
1 December, 2011 - The debate over the federal budget and deficit reduction gets more heated each year. But on this World AIDS Day, the benefits of federal investment in research are incontrovertible. As documented earlier this year, for the first time in history, a cure for AIDS is possible. One man’s HIV infection has been eradicated using a HIV-resistant immune cell transplant—a concept based on discoveries first made by researchers supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the 1990’s. For millions around the world this discovery is incredibly encouraging, despite the fact that this type of treatment would be difficult, costly, and too dangerous for widespread implementation. With the new scientific breakthrough, some of the smartest, most experienced scientists and new young investigators are employing cutting edge technologies and working tirelessly to discover and develop a safe, effective, feasible, and scalable HIV cure. We need Congress to increase funding for NIH for AIDS research in order to build on this momentum.
We Need the Patent Pool to Work
A Joint Statement by Treatment Action Campaign, Treatment Action Group, HIV i-Base, European AIDS Treatment Group and SECTION27
16 November 2011 - The exorbitant price of AIDS medicines, especially antiretrovirals, has been one of the main barriers to people with HIV accessing them, especially in developing countries. As activist organisations we have been at the forefront of many of the struggles to make medicines affordable.
US Government HIV/AIDS Clinical Trial Sites to Accelerate Completion of Phase III TB Drug Trial
TB Alliance's REMox TB program leverages ACTG sites to advance testing of improved TB treatments
Durban, South Africa— 15 November 2011 The TB Alliance announces the launch of a collaboration with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases' (NIAID) AIDS Clinical Trial Group (ACTG) to conduct and help complete a Phase III clinical trial testing potentially faster-acting tuberculosis (TB) treatments. Few clinical trials for TB have been conducted under modern GCP/GCLP standards in the past 40 years, and the infrastructure to support invigorated global TB drug research is lacking, especially in resource-limited settings where the majority of TB cases are found. The partnership between the NIAID's ACTG and TB Alliance joins available resources with the urgent need for TB clinical research capacity to accelerate testing of new therapies that can benefit both the HIV/AIDS and TB communities.
Time of Great Change in TB Drug Development
Speech Delivered to Critical Path to TB Drug Regimens Meeting, Washington DC
9 November 2011 - We are living in a time of great change and excitement in TB drug development. The last year has witnessed a number of epochal changes, including the approval and rollout of the most rapid test for TB ever discovered, the GeneXpert; the combination TB drug studies in the relapse mouse model of Eric Nuermberger and Jacques Grosset at Johns Hopkins with support from the TB Alliance; the progression of TMC207 into late phase II and of OPC67683 into phase III; and the first new regimen EBA study, NC-001 also from the Alliance.
Treatment Action Group Issues Latest Update on Global TB R&D Investment Trends
2010 Funding Flat at $617 million, Less Than One-Third of the Global Need
26 October 2011 - LILLE, FRANCE – New data released by the Treatment Action Group (TAG) and the Stop TB Partnership finds that in 2010 the world spent just $617 million in tuberculosis (TB) research and development (R&D), or 0.3% less than 2009 funding levels—the first time TAG documents no growth since it began tracking TB research investments in 2005.
Strengthening the Role of the Stop TB Partnership in the Struggle Against Tuberculosis
11 October 2011 - Dear Professor Atun, We are writing to follow up on our letter of May 3, 2011, regarding the steps being taken by the Coordinating Board to reduce the conflict of interest in the Stop TB Partnership’s relationship with the World Health Organization (WHO), improve transparency and accountability in the operations and activities of the Partnership, and strengthen the Partnership’s ability to fulfill its mandate.
Treatment Action Group Mourns the Loss of Pioneering AIDS and TB Activist Winstone Zulu (1964-2011)
12 October 2011 - Not only was Winstone Zulu a hero in the fight against AIDS, but he was also a pioneer in bringing AIDS activism to the hitherto barren and civil society free zone of tuberculosis prevention, treatment, and care.