1st Dec 2022 by Genevieve Timmins, Imperial College London
The launch of Imperial’s Faculty of Medicine in 1997 coincided with a new era in HIV/AIDS treatment and research. Just prior to its creation came the groundbreaking revelation that combining three antiretroviral drugs could drastically improve the prognosis of people living with HIV. The subsequent rollout of triple therapy in the UK quickly led to a steep decline in the number of people developing and dying from AIDS.
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The creation of a new Faculty of Medicine in 1997 represented a unique opportunity to build on this established culture of trailblazing HIV/AIDS research, while ushering in a new wave of talent and ideas. As the Faculty celebrates its Silver Jubilee, we reflect on the groundbreaking contributions of five leading HIV researchers and their teams over the past 25 years, and their wider historical and social contexts.
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In the mid-1990s, Sarah Fidler – Professor of HIV and Communicable Diseases – was embarking on her PhD at St Mary’s Hospital.
“At the time, we only had early-stage treatments for HIV, which didn’t work very well. The medicines we had available for people living with HIV had a lot of side effects, which meant that people were advised to delay starting treatment until their immune systems weren’t working very well,” she recalls.
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Following the discovery that ART enhanced individual survival while also protecting against the risk of passing HIV on to partners and infants, Professor Fidler began co-chairing a new project with international colleagues and funders: the groundbreaking PopART trial. Its focus was on exploring how to implement an acceptable and effective approach to delivering community-wide HIV testing and treatment in a cluster randomized controlled trial in Zambia and South Africa.
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In parallel to this work, Professor Fidler has been leading work into new treatments for HIV and – with the support of the NIHR Imperial BRC-funded CHERUB collaboration – possible cures.
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One example of this is the ongoing RIO clinical trial, jointly led by Professor Fidler and scientists at the University of Oxford and the Rockefeller University. The trial will test whether a new type of therapy called broadly neutralising monoclonal antibodies (or bNAbs) can keep HIV under control without daily antiretroviral treatment (ART) tablets.
