Emory President James Wagner welcomed participants Wednesday to the AIDS Vaccine 2010 conference in Atlanta, hosted by the Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise and locally hosted by the Emory Center for AIDS Research.

“Only occasionally are there scientific challenges that unite people powerfully towards a common goal,” Wagner said. “We are proud for the role we’ve been able to play in the pursuit of vaccine research. I am particularly pleased that so many students and young investigators have been able to participate in this conference.”

John Mascola from the Vaccine Research Center at the NIH gave the day’s first scientific talk, describing the discovery of broadly cross-reactive neutralizing antibodies to HIV and the ability to isolate those antibodies. This is the kind of recent discoveries that has re-energized the HIV vaccine research community.

Bette Korber of the Los Alamos National Laboratory noted that HIV mutations that escape immune response in some infected people are frequently susceptible in others. New “mosaic vaccines” can expand the breadth and depth of these immune responses, she said. She also described the effort underway in her laboratory to re-examine results of an earlier vaccine trial, VAX004, in light of new analytic strategies.

Giuseppe Pantaleo of the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois in Lausanne, Switzerland expressed the need to implement adaptive clinical trial study design. This theme — the need to examine clinical trial results early and often, and then adapt, rather than waiting for all results at the very end of a years-long trial — has been echoed often at the conference.

At a midday press briefing, Peter Kwong of the NIH Vaccine Research Center discussed his research with broadly neutralizing antibodies, one of which attacks the initial site of vital attachment to CD4 T cells.

Hendrik Streek from Harvard’s Ragon Institute described how vaccines induce antibody and CD4 response and contraction. Even though CD4 cells are the ones attacked during HIV infection, Streek believes CD4 responses may be a missing link to effective vaccine development

Alan Bernstein, executive director of the Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise, led a discussion of the new Enterprise Scientific Strategic Plan. Less than two out of five people who need treatment for HIV are receiving it, said Bernstein, which underscores the importance of an effective vaccine.

The new plan arrives at a time of great momentum and excitement in the field. A year of important advances has included discoveries about broadly neutralizing antibodies, new technologies, and a vaccine that demonstrated an immune response. The plan emphasizes novel clinical trials design, a strong commitment and engagement by many partners, and expanded diversity of funding by many stakeholders.

Jose Esparza, senior advisor on HIV vaccines to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, emphasized the need to rapidly capitalize on new science, and said HIV vaccines are one of the foundation’s top priorities. High risk, high reward projects will be funded through the Gates Grand Challenges Explorations grants.