Sebelius Allocates $25 Million for ADAPs
ADAP Crisis Task Force Reaches Agreement with Boehringer Ingelheim
ViiV Healthcare Announces Positive Action U.S. Southern Initiative
Progress in Quest for HIV Vaccine
New Genetic Avenues to HIV/AIDS Research Discovered
Governmental Inertia Halts Implementation of Syringe Exchange Legislation
“Hell Freezes Over” Meets “God Hates Fags”
Sebelius Allocates $25 Million for ADAPs
On July 8, The New York Times reported that Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, said that she would provide $25 million more to help endangered state AIDS Drug Assistance Programs provide life-saving medications for people with HIV/AIDS.
Dr. Howard K. Koh, the assistant secretary of health and human services in charge of the program, said the action “reflects the administration’s commitment to HIV treatment and care.”
Though Secretary Sebelius said she was confident that the $25 million would meet the existing and projected need until the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30, AIDS advocates and state public health officials disagree.
Ann Lefert, a policy analyst at the National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors (NASTAD), said, “We appreciate the action taken by the Obama administration, but we are not sure it will be sufficient.”
Three Republican senators — Richard Burr of North Carolina, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, and Michael Enzi of Wyoming — are backing legislation (Senate bill 3401) to provide $126 million in emergency assistance for the current fiscal year, on top of the $835 million that Congress had already appropriated.
John Hart, a spokesman for Senator Coburn, said, “The secretary is taking a step in the right direction, but it’s not enough to serve the more than 2,000 patients who are on waiting lists.”
Antiretroviral drugs have enabled many people with HIV to live long lives, but the drugs cost an average of $12,000 a year per person, and many people cannot afford them without public assistance.
The AIDS Drug Assistance Program serves mainly low-income, uninsured people, many of whom are people of color. More than 168,000 people received medications through the program last year.
ADAP Crisis Task Force Reaches Agreement with Boehringer Ingelheim
In a related story, also on July 8, the ADAP Crisis Task Force (ACTF) announced that it has reached an agreement with Boehringer Ingelheim to help address the urgent need for help in keeping the nation’s struggling AIDS Drug Assistance Programs operating.
According the to ACTF press release, “Additional discounts and rebates on HIV medicines produced by Boehringer Ingelheim will be provided to the country’s ADAPs, beyond existing ones mandated by health reform and included in previous agreements with the ACTF. Boehringer Ingelheim also will freeze its prices for ADAPs through 2012.”
“We appreciate Boehringer Ingelheim’s willingness to come to the table and be a part of the collective solution to this crisis” stated Jennifer Brown, Director of the Bureau of Epidemiology at the Utah Department of Health and spokesperson for the ACTF. “We also understand that industry alone cannot close the entire gap. Additional state and federal funding is required to avoid a growing public health crisis,” added Brown.
The ACTF previously reached agreements with Abbott Laboratories, Gilead Sciences, Merck, Inc., Tibotec Therapeutics, and ViiV Healthcare. Negotiations continue with Bristol-Myers Squibb and Genentech.
The National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors (NASTAD) routinely monitors the status of ADAP programs. While the program will yield savings from these agreements with pharmaceutical partners, NASTAD estimates the program is in need of an additional $126 million in FY2010 emergency federal funding and an additional $370 million in FY2011 federal funding, as well as ongoing and increased funding from state governments.
To view a list of current ADAP access restrictions, please visit www.nastad.org.
ViiV Healthcare Announces Positive Action U.S. Southern Initiative
In a July 6 press release, ViiV Healthcare announced the launch of the “Positive Action U.S. Southern Initiative, a collaborative, community-focused program designed to address gaps in services or programs that support linkages to care and treatment adherence among individuals living with HIV/AIDS.”
The launch follows extensive consultations with some of the sector’s leading non-governmental organizations, practitioners and policy-makers to better understand the personal, societal and structural barriers that may prevent people from accessing and maintaining care. The Southern Initiative is designed to address critical needs identified by communities and to support the White House National HIV/AIDS Strategy goals of reducing health disparities.
“Black Americans and Latinos are disproportionately affected by HIV/AIDS, and many are still not linked to care,” stated Phill Wilson, President and CEO of the Black AIDS Institute. “We are very pleased to see ViiV address this issue in this way. These are the right populations to target and the South is the right region of the country to target if we are to be serious about changing the trajectory of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the U.S."
“Grassroots organizations know what their communities need. They have innovative ideas and knowledge required to succeed, but may lack adequate financial resources. Through the Southern Initiative, we hope to help reduce healthcare disparities and tackle the HIV epidemic in this country in a meaningful, sustainable way,” said Bill Collier, Head of North America, ViiV Healthcare.
The release states, “ViiV Healthcare is seeking letters of interest (LOIs) to support programs specifically focused on reducing disparities in HIV/AIDS linkages to care and treatment among African American and Latinos in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi. The program will provide selected organizations with up to $50,000 per year for a provisional commitment of two years.” Letters of interest must be received by Friday, July 30, 2010, 5:00 pm ET for consideration to the full proposal phase (see links below).
Interested parties can receive detailed information about the two-phase proposal process and download an application form at www.viivhealthcare.com
Questions will be publicly answered in the FAQ document located on the website. Additional questions about the process should be directed to usgrants@viivhealthcare.com.
Progress in Quest for HIV Vaccine
In a report in The Wall Street Journal on July 8, U.S. government scientists say they have “discovered three powerful antibodies, the strongest of which neutralizes 91% of HIV strains, more than any AIDS antibody yet discovered.”
The research was published on July 8 in two papers in the online edition of the journal Science, 10 days before the opening of the International AIDS Conference in Vienna, where prevention science is expected to take center stage. The new discovery is part of what Wayne Koff, head of research and development at the nonprofit International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, calls a "renaissance" in HIV vaccine research.
According to the report, the HIV antibodies were discovered in the cells of a 60-year-old African-American gay man, known as Donor 45, whose body made the antibodies naturally. The trick for scientists now is to develop a vaccine or other methods to enable anyone's body to produce them as well.
Dr. Gary Nabel, director of the Vaccine Research Center at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who was a leader of the research, said, “We're going to be at this for a while” before any benefit is seen in the clinic.
Until last year, only a handful of “broadly neutralizing antibodies,” those that efficiently disable a large variety of HIV strains, had been discovered and most of them only neutralized about 40% of known HIV variants. But in the past year, thanks to efficient new detection methods, at least a half dozen broadly neutralizing antibodies, including the three latest ones, have been identified and reported in peer-reviewed journals.
According to the report, “HIV is a highly mutable virus, but one place where the virus doesn't mutate much is where it attaches to a particular molecule on the surface of cells it infects. Building on previous research, researchers created a probe, shaped exactly like that critical site, and used it to attract only those antibodies that efficiently attack it. That is how they fished out of Donor 45 the special antibodies: they screened 25 million of his cells to find 12 that produced the antibodies.”
Donor 45's antibodies didn't protect him from contracting HIV. That is likely because the virus had already taken hold before his body produced the antibodies. He is still alive, and has been living with HIV for 20 years.
While he has produced the most powerful HIV antibody yet discovered, researchers say they don't know of anything special about his genes that would make him unique. They expect that most people would be capable of producing the antibodies, if scientists could find the right way to stimulate their production.
To read the full story, go to wsj.com
New Genetic Avenues to HIV/AIDS Research Discovered
Researchers at Oregon State University (OSU) and the California Institute of Technology (Cal Tech) have discovered that a genetic regulator which is critical to many life functions also plays a key role in the formation of T-cells, the white blood cells that are essential to immune function.
The discovery, announced in the journal Science, suggests that some types of immune function might be influenced by manipulation of this genetic regulator. This could be a target for drug development, and could open the door to new immune system-based therapies for HIV/AIDS and several other diseases of T-cells, such as autoimmune disorders and allergies.
The genetic regulator, or transcription factor, is called Ctip2, and it's also known as Bcl11b. It's a protein that controls gene “expression,” or what aspects of a cell's genetic code will be turned on and which will be left silent.
“Ctip2 is so important to various life functions that laboratory mice lacking this gene die within a few hours after birth,” said Mark Leid, a professor and assistant dean in the OSU College of Pharmacy. “The new finding about its relationship to early events in T-cell formation may be of substantial interest to immunologists and clinicians alike.”
Governmental Inertia Halts Implementation of Syringe Exchange Legislation
In an article he wrote for The Huffington Post, Daniel Raymond, Policy Director of the Harm Reduction Coalition, called attention to the fact that while the new law ending the ban on federal funding for syringe exchanges was signed by President Obama in December of 2009, seven months later it has still not been implemented.
According to Raymond, “Bureaucratic inertia has repeatedly delayed the release of revised guidance from federal agencies that would enable health departments and non-profit groups to apply their federal dollars to syringe exchange. As states and local organizations continue to wrestle with their own budget cuts, the lack of leadership and direction from the federal government has paralyzed their efforts to plan, prioritize, and deliver services.”
Raymond points out that syringe exchange has been proven in numerous studies to “prevent HIV, helps users access drug treatment, and does not increase levels of drug use nor encourage anyone to start injecting drugs.” He goes on to cite recent research that suggests that it is also helpful in preventing hepatitis C and overdose deaths.
He acknowledges several possible reasons for the lack of action including political caution and lack of experience with syringe exchange programs. But he proposes that what is lacking is federal leadership and support.
“As the White House Office of National AIDS Policy prepares to release the country's first National HIV/AIDS Strategy, syringe exchange programs are left wondering whether the lifting of the federal funding ban was a hollow victory, as they're forced to stretch scarce dollars to keep their doors open.
“The National HIV/AIDS Strategy will provide an important signal as to whether this Administration is truly committed to science-based HIV prevention: will syringe exchange be prioritized, and will the strategy contain meaningful targets for expanding syringe access?
“Federal agencies must implement new policies on use of federal funds for syringe exchange, if the National HIV/AIDS Strategy is to have any credibility or impact. Further delays in implanting federal support for syringe exchange will only be a symbol of the Administration's ability and will to fulfill its promises and policies on HIV.”
“Hell Freezes Over” Meets “God Hates Fags”
The Resource Center of Dallas was the site of a protest on July 9 by members of the Westboro Baptist Church, the headquarters of God Hates Fags. The protest was against the Center and Beth El Binah, a Reform Judaism congregation with an LGBT outreach that has met at the Center for years.
While the Center did not formally stage a counter protest, they have been holding a counter protest fundraiser online. It’s called “Hell Freezes Over” and will initially raise money to support their hot meals program. Additional money will go towards general operations. As of July 8, over $1300 had been raised, both online and in collections from supporters for every minute the church protestors picketed.
“The protestors have been known to abandon their protests when they’re turned into a fundraiser,” said Bret Camp, associate executive director for health and medical services at the Center. “Whether the church shows up or not, this is a way for the North Texas community to stand with us against hate and help us with a timely need.”
To donate, go to www.rcdallas.org.