Newswise — On Friday, October 24 at 3 p.m. at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., Abbott will host a symposium titled: HIV Diagnosis and Therapy, Beyond B: Challenges for the Future. The keynote speaker is Robert Gallo, M.D., known worldwide for identifying the HIV virus in 1984 as the causative agent of AIDS.
Dr. Gallo and other symposium speakers will discuss the clinical implications of the ever-changing HIV virus and how the evolution and proliferation of HIV subtypes or mutations are posing serious challenges to diagnosis and patient care.
According to the CDC, some 56,000 new cases of HIV infection still occur in the U.S, every year despite major diagnostic and therapeutic advances that have helped control the disease and allow patients to lead longer, healthier lives. For the past quarter century, HIV has proven to be a clever and adaptive virus that continually poses challenges to physicians, virologists, clinical researchers and public health officials. According the New England Journal of Medicine, "the continuing spread of HIV is causing a world pandemic of unprecedented genetic and geographic complexity. Five HIV subtypes and two circulating recombinant forms have each established a global prevalence greater than 2.5 percent, a level that virtually ensures continued presence in the decades to come."
The symposium speakers are:
Robert Gallo, M.D. (keynote address) Founder and Director The Institute of Human Virology University of Maryland
Samuel Broder, M.D. (moderator) Chief Medical Officer Celera Corporation
Susan Fiscus, Ph.D. Professor, Microbiology and Immunology, Pathology and Laboratory Medicine University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
C. Bradley Hare, M.D. Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine University of California San Francisco Medical Director, UCSF Positive Health Program San Francisco General Hospital
John Hackett, Jr., Ph.D. Section Manager, AIDS Research and Retrovirus Discovery Abbott
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