STEPS 9: A Community Initiative to Design the Pathway to a Durable ART-Free Control of HIV Infection – Summary Report

The STEPS workshops, initiated by Giulio Maria Corbelli in 2014 and organised annually ahead of the main European HIV scientific events, are an opportunity to expand the dialogue among community members, researchers and other relevant stakeholders, such as peer educators, community journalists, advocates, industry partners and healthcare professionals, in order to promote the share of knowledge, information, experiences from different perspectives, as well as community engagement in research on the HIV cure and related topics.

The 9th STEPS HIV Cure Community-led Workshop took place on Wednesday, 18 October 2023, in Warsaw (Poland) and was attended by around 50 different stakeholders.

Coordinated by Sean Hosein and chaired by Brian West, this year the theme of our workshop was “STEPS towards a cure for everyone – dedicated to Giulio Maria Corbelli”. The workshop addressed approaches for HIV cure research with Dr. Katie Henslie and Dr. Henrieke Prins, provided updates on different approaches to cure including the use of mRNA technology with Dr. Mario Ostrowski and highlighted the impact of cure research on people living with HIV with Grzegorz Jezierski.

The meeting report was prepared by Gus Cairns and provides an overview of key messages from the workshop.

Key Highlights

• NOVA study proves that starting ART during acute HIV infection substantially reduces transmissions.
• EU2CONTROL cohort study will enrol post-treatment controllers in collaboration with EATG.
• Researchers are designing personalised therapeutic vaccines based on similarly successful ones used to cure cancer.