2024

In a study named Breakthrough of the Year by Science magazine, the drug lenacapavir is found to be 100% effective at preventing HIV acquisition when used as twice-yearly injectable PrEP. The more than 5,000 cisgender adolescent girls in the study, conducted by Gilead Sciences, registered zero HIV infections. A second study among different populations shows 99.9% efficacy, and two other trials are ongoing.

Researchers announce that a German man, the “second Berlin Patient,” likely joins the six others who have been cured of HIV by a stem cell transplant. The patient has been in sustained remission for five and a half years after a transplant of donor cells with only a single “heterozygous” gene mutation for CCR5, meaning the donor cells were fully susceptible to HIV infection. Researchers are investigating what healing mechanisms may be at work in this case.

The IMPAACT P1115 study shows that early treatment may reduce the HIV reservoir and lay the groundwork for a functional cure, particularly for children. Researchers monitored 54 infants who acquired HIV in the womb and initiated ART within 48 hours after birth. Among six children who underwent a treatment interruption, four have been able to sustain remission of HIV for at least a year..

A clinical trial of EBT-101, a CRISPR gene therapy developed by Excision BioTherapeutics, finds that it does not prevent HIV viral rebound. Researchers, who will continue trials with a higher dosing of EBT-101 and a different delivery method, do establish that a gene-editing intervention could be safe and well tolerated.

Respected health journalism and HIV/AIDS informational resource aidsmap/NAM Publications shutters after 37 years, and AIDS/LifeCycle, an annual 545-mile bicycle ride to raise funds for San Francisco AIDS Foundation and the Los Angeles LGBT Center, announces that, after 30 years, 2025 will be its last.

Billionaire businessman Terry Ragon and wife Susan donate $400 million for HIV cure research at the eponymous Ragon Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Researchers, including past amfAR grantees, will focus on replicating the supercharged immune systems of “elite controllers,” people living with HIV who can control the virus without antiretroviral therapy.

A U.S. district judge rules that the U.S. military cannot bar people living with HIV with an undetectable viral load from serving in the armed forces.

AIDS epidemiologists since the early 1980s, South African husband and wife researchers Salim and Quarraisha Abdool-Karim win the Lasker Prize (“America’s Nobel”) “for illuminating key drivers of heterosexual HIV transmission; introducing life-saving approaches to prevent and treat HIV; and statesmanship in public health policy and advocacy.”

Dr. Ada Adimora, a groundbreaking epidemiologist, clinician, mentor, and Distinguished Professor of Medicine at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, dies on New Year’s Day.

AIDS activist and educator Hydeia Broadbent, who started her public advocacy at age six with a memorable appearance on Oprah, dies on February 20 at the age of 39. In 2017, Hydeia was profiled in amfAR’s Epic Voices interview series, with her video garnering 50,000 views.

David Mixner, longtime LGBTQ political strategist and AIDS activist, dies of long COVID at 77.