IAVI policy brief examines HIV vaccine funding

A new policy brief from the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) "summarizes data on HIV vaccine R&D funding trends originally published by the HIV Vaccines and Microbicides Resource Tracking Working Group in 2011," according to the IAVI website. "The crucial addition of a preventive HIV vaccine to [a comprehensive biomedical HIV prevention] toolkit will not only depend on the sustained commitment of current donors. It will also depend on the support of a diversified field of new champions willing to fund the research required to capitalize on new discoveries in the HIV vaccine field," the brief states, noting that "[b]etween 2009 and 2010, overall investment in HIV vaccine R&D dropped one percent from $868 million to $859 million" (November 2011).