CONTACT: Adam Ortega, adam.ortega@treatmentactiongroup.org

April 6, 2026, NEW YORK, NY  – TAG recommends that the AIDS Research Advisory Council (ARAC) endorse the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease’s (NIAID) continuing support of a balanced and comprehensive portfolio of basic, clinical, and implementation science by providing a funding opportunity to renew the four current networks: 

• Advancing Clinical Therapeutics Globally for HIV/AIDS and Other Infections (ACTG)
• The International Maternal Pediatric Adolescent AIDS Clinical Trials Network (IMPAACT)
• The HIV Prevention Trials Network (HPTN)
• The HIV Vaccine Trials Network (HVTN) or the updated IBPTN

Each provides critical, non-overlapping contributions to the overall research effort to discover and develop tools to end the HIV pandemic.

The work of the networks has made history, with the ACTG’s therapeutics research having transformed HIV from a life-threatening to manageable chronic condition and the HPTN facilitating the approval of highly effective biomedical prevention interventions (e.g., oral and long-acting injectable Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis/PrEP). 

IMPAACT has contributed directly to the approval of new treatments for children with HIV and related coinfections including tuberculosis (TB), addressing the harmful lag in translating biomedical advances from adults to the pediatric population. 

The extensive and careful work of the HVTN has highlighted the challenges associated with trying to induce protection against a viral infection of the immune system, and is now charting a path toward solving the complex puzzle of inducing antibody-mediated protection against HIV acquisition. Congress has called for “sustained, robust Federal funding for HIV vaccine research” in FY 2026 appropriations text, explicitly rejecting the attempted cancellation of grants to support the development of effective antibody-based HIV vaccines. The HVTN is also supporting research into vaccines for the key co-infection tuberculosis. 

But much work remains to ensure that the mission of ending the HIV epidemic is completed, including development of improved treatment options for all populations, a preventive vaccine suitable for broad implementation (not reliant on self-assessment of exposure risk), and globally scalable curative interventions. 

The points we’d like to emphasize in the context of the ARAC discussion are as follows:

1. The importance of a smooth continuum from discovery, to development, to implementation science focusing on the most important questions related to reducing new infections, illness, and death. 
2. NIH and network supported implementation science must be based on a coherent gap analysis assessing what questions are not being addressed now, which are important priority-driven research questions, and which areas of implementation science research cannot be carried out by implementing agencies such as CDC, CMS, HRSA, SAMHSA, etc.
3. Restoring and reinforcing NIH funding for the international sites and researchers through the networks will be essential to accelerating progress, and benefits people in the United States by allowing studies of sufficient size and statistical power to generate robust results such as those for long-acting PrEP and for management of major co-infections and comorbidities such as tuberculosis. It’s also crucial for HIV and TB research with pregnant, lactating, and pediatric populations given the relatively smaller size of these populations in the US. Continued network activities in South Africa are particularly important due to the research infrastructure that NIH funding has helped create and prevalence of the key coinfection tuberculosis, which remains the leading cause of death among people with HIV globally. 
4. The networks must continue to address significant coinfections and comorbidities including tuberculosis, sexually transmitted infections (STIs), viral hepatitis, mental health and substance use disorders, and aging-associated conditions including cardiovascular disease, cancers, and frailty.
5. The networks and their studies must continue to focus on the key populations that have been placed at greatest risk of HIV including communities of color, LGBTQ+ people, women, infants and children, people who use drugs, the incarcerated, immigrants, and migrants.

TAG’s cross-network recommendations: 

6. Through the next funding cycle, NIH should ensure:
   A. Continued investment in the engagement of communities who stand to benefit from, and can enhance implementation of, network discoveries and innovations.
   B. Inclusion of strategic, codified mechanisms for cultivating junior career scientists both domestically and internationally.
   C. Continued cross-network collaboration on joint protocols should be encouraged and facilitated.
   D. Comprehensive support through all networks to include the full set of core functions including community engagement and oversight.

TAG’s full set of submitted network-specific recommendations are online here: https://www.treatmentactiongroup.org/letter/hiv-clinical-trials-networks-backgrounders-and-tag-recommendations/ 

TAG may submit further comments in response to the presentations at the ARAC meeting. 

# # #

Treatment Action Group (TAG) is an independent, activist, and community-based research and policy think tank committed to racial, gender, and LGBTQ+ equity; social justice; and liberation, fighting to end HIV, tuberculosis (TB), and hepatitis C virus (HCV).