AIDS Vaccine 2001: Looking to the Future.

Ronald T . Mitsuyasu
Associate Professor of Medicine, University of California Los Angeles, and Director of the UCLA CARE Center,
UCLA Medical Center, Los Angeles.

INTRODUCTION
AIDS Vaccine 2001, a new addition to the international conference calendar that will undoubtedly become a biannual event, was designed to provide a setting for sharing the latest basic, clinical, and public health data relevant
to AIDS vaccine development and to facilitate international and interdisciplinary collaboration in the field of AIDS vaccinology .

The 3-day meeting in Philadelphia provided considerable information on the preclinical development and early clinical evaluation of several vaccine candidates, and ample opportunity for discussion on AIDS
vaccine and immunotherapy study implementation.

The overall impression is that a great deal of effort and considerable expertise is now being directed towards dissecting the immunologic and virologic components of protective immunity against HIV and towards the development of novel immunotherapeutic approaches to the prevention of HIV infection.

This effort is in no small part due to the worldwide attention being given to the devastating effects of HIV and AIDS in resource-poor, developing countries of the world, and to the realization that treatment of HIV in and of itself is unlikely to contain the spread of this epidemic.