i-Base

3rd HIV Research for Prevention Conference (R4P2018)

21–25 October 2018, Madrid

Introduction

The Research for Prevention (R4P) conferences are held every two years to focus on vaccines, PrEP, microbicides, treatment as prevention and other biomedical prevention approaches.

This year the meeting was held in Madrid and attended by 1400 delegates.

The programme balanced a strong emphasis on basic science (vaccine-related studies, mAbs, pipeline PrEP) with a similar emphasis on practical issues of prevention research (who are accessing PrEP, including in different populations and including when people decide to start and stop).

With 138 oral abstracts and >600 posters, there are numerous other topics inbetween – although fewer clinical efficacy studies than previous years.

The R4P meeting is committed to comprehensive webcasts of the presentations from both plenary lectures and oral abstract sessions of each talk are already online. This is especially important given the increasing difficulty in funding to attend international meetings, although the meeting also has a generous scholarship programme for researchers and journalists..

Conference planner – with links to abstracts.
https://www.professionalabstracts.com/hivr4p2018/iplanner/#/grid

Programme highlights this year include the following broad topis.

  • PrEP in practice: who is using PrEP, where and how – and who is still left out (many given only 300,000 are estimated to access PrEP globally).
  • Broadly neutralising antibodies (bNAbs) for both treatment and prevention (from newborns to adults).
  • Pipeline PrEP, including both new drugs and new formulations (pills, injections, implants, rings etc).
  • Pharmacokinetic. modelling and imaging studies showing delivery and distribution of PrEP drugs and including review of TDF/FTC levels in trans women.
  • Treatment as prevention and U=U integration into clinical practice.

Links to early HTB reports will be added to this page as they are published.