Various fringe theories have arisen to speculate about purported alternative origins for the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), with claims ranging from it being due to accidental exposure to supposedly purposeful acts. Several inquiries and investigations have been carried out as a result, and each of these theories has consequently been determined to be based on unfounded and/or false information. HIV has been shown to have evolved from or be closely related to the simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) in West Central Africa sometime in the early 20th century. HIV was discovered in the 1980s by the French scientist Luc Montagnier. Before the 1980s, HIV was an unknown deadly disease.
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases is one of the 27 institutes and centers that make up the National Institutes of Health (NIH), an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). NIAID's mission is to conduct basic and applied research to better understand, treat, and prevent infectious, immunologic, and allergic diseases.
Institute for Systems Biology (ISB) is a non-profit research institution located in Seattle, Washington, United States. ISB concentrates on systems biology, the study of relationships and interactions between various parts of biological systems, and advocates an interdisciplinary approach to biological research.
Since October 2018, the Center for Global Infectious Disease Research has been part of the Seattle Children's Research Institute. At the time of the merger, CID Research had 166 scientists. Its mission was to eliminate the world's most devastating infectious diseases through leadership in scientific discovery. The organization's research labs were in the South Lake Union area of Seattle, WA. The institute's research focused on four areas of infectious disease: HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis (TB), and Emerging & Neglected Diseases (END) like African sleeping sickness, leishmaniasis, Chagas disease, and toxoplasmosis. CID Research was engaged in early stages of the scientific pipeline including bench science and malaria clinical trials and has expertise in immunology, vaccinology, and drug discovery.
Douglas D. Richman is an American infectious diseases physician and medical virologist. Richman's work has focused on the HIV/AIDS pandemic, since its appearance in the early 1980s. His major contributions have been in the areas of treatment, drug resistance, and pathogenicity.
The Vaccine Research Center (VRC), is an intramural division of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The mission of the VRC is to discover and develop both vaccines and antibody-based products that target infectious diseases.
Barton Ford Haynes is an American physician and immunologist internationally recognized for work in T-cell immunology, retrovirology, and HIV vaccine development. Haynes is a Frederic M. Hanes Professor of Medicine and Immunology at Duke University Medical Center. He is the director of the Duke Human Vaccine Institute and the Duke Center for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Immunology and Immunogen Discovery (CHAVI-ID), which was funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in 2012. In addition, Haynes directs the B-cell Lineage Envelope Design Study, the Centralized Envelope Phase I Study, and the Role of IgA in HIV-1 Protection Study as part of the Collaboration for AIDS Vaccine Discovery (CAVD), which was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2006.
Stefan Hugo Ernst Kaufmann is a German immunologist and microbiologist and is one of the highly cited immunologists worldwide for the decade 1990 to 2000. He is amongst the 0.01% most cited scientists of ca. 7 million scientists in 22 major scientific fields globally.
The STEP Study was a Phase IIb clinical trial intended to study the efficacy of an experimental HIV vaccine based on a human adenovirus 5 (HAdV-5) vector. The study was conducted in North and South America, the Caribbean, and Australia. A related study using the same experimental vaccine was conducted simultaneously in South Africa. These trials were co-sponsored by Merck, the HIV Vaccine Trials Network (HVTN), and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), and had an Oversight Committee consisting of representatives from these three organizations. In South Africa the trial was overseen by the South African AIDS Vaccine Initiative.
Thumbi Ndung’u is a Kenyan-born HIV/AIDS researcher. He is the deputy director (Science) and a Max Planck Research Group Leader at the Africa Health Research Institute (AHRI) in Durban, South Africa. He is Professor of Infectious Diseases in the Division of Immunity and Infection, University College London. He is Professor and Victor Daitz Chair in HIV/TB Research and Scientific Director of the HIV Pathogenesis Programme (HPP) at the Nelson R. Mandela School of Medicine, University of KwaZulu-Natal. He holds the South African Research Chair in Systems Biology of HIV/AIDS. He is an Adjunct Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He is the Programme Director of the Sub-Saharan African Network for TB/HIV Research Excellence (SANTHE), a research and capacity building initiative funded by the African Academy of Sciences and the Wellcome Trust.
Keiko Ozato is a Japanese American geneticist whose research has focused on gene regulation in the developing immune system; She is best known for her contributions to immunogenetics and epigenetics in isolating the IRF8 transcription factor that aids humans in fighting off disease and for identifying the BRD4 protein that regulates cellular and viral genes that can invoke epigenetic memory. She is Senior Investigator at the Section on Molecular Genetics of Immunity at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland and a professor at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Charles R. Wira is a scientist who is specialized in endocrinology and mucosal immunology. His research specifically focuses on the immune system at mucosal surfaces of the female reproductive tract.
Barry R. Bloom is Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor and Joan L. and Julius H. Jacobson Professor of Public Health in the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases and Department of Global Health and Population in the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, where he served as dean of the faculty from 1998 through December 31, 2008.
M. Juliana “Julie” McElrath is a senior vice president and director of the vaccine and infection disease division at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the principal investigator of the HIV Vaccine Trials Network Laboratory Center in Seattle, Washington. She is also a professor at the University of Washington.
B. Brett Finlay, is a Canadian microbiologist well known for his contributions to understanding how microbes cause disease in people and developing new tools for fighting infections, as well as the role the microbiota plays in human health and disease. Science.ca describes him as one of the world's foremost experts on the molecular understanding of the ways bacteria infect their hosts. He also led the SARS Accelerated Vaccine Initiative (SAVI) and developed vaccines to SARS and a bovine vaccine to E. coli O157:H7. His current research interests focus on pathogenic E. coli and Salmonella pathogenicity, and the role of the microbiota in infections, asthma, and malnutrition. He is currently the UBC Peter Wall Distinguished Professor and a Professor in the Michael Smith Laboratories, Microbiology and Immunology, and Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and Co-director and Senior Fellow for the CIFAR Humans and Microbes program. He is also co-author of the book Let Them Eat Dirt: Saving Your Child from an Oversanitized World and The Whole-Body Microbiome: How to Harness Microbes - Inside and Out - For Lifelong Health. Finlay is the author of over 500 publications in peer-reviewed journals and served as editor of several professional publications for many years.
Gary J. Nabel is an American virologist and immunologist who is President and chief executive officer of ModeX Therapeutics in Natick, Massachusetts.
Bonnie Jean Mathieson was an American biomedical scientist and pioneer in HIV vaccine research. Mathieson worked at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for 43 years. She played a fundamental role in NIH HIV/AIDS research, vaccine programs, and scientific policy.
Alash'le Grace Abimiku is a Nigerian executive director of the International Research Centre of Excellence at the Institute of Human Virology Nigeria and a professor of virology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.
Carol A. Nacy is a microbiologist and immunologist focused on the immune response of bacterial and parasitic disease.
John N. Nkengasong is a Cameroonian-American virologist serving as the Global AIDS Coordinator in the Biden administration since 2022 and Senior Bureau Official for Global Health Security and Diplomacy since 2023. He previously worked as the Director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention from 2016 to 2022, as well as at the World Health Organization (WHO) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Nkengasong was appointed the WHO Special Envoy for Africa.
