Since the discovery of AIDS, more than 20 million people have died from the disease. Currently, over 30 million people are living with HIV. Although improvements in treatment and the access to anti-retroviral therapy has reduced morbidity and mortality from HIV/AIDS, 7,500 people worldwide become infected each day. The development of an effective vaccine to prevent the transmission of HIV/AIDS is critically needed to stem the pandemic.

The Comprehensive T Cell Vaccine Immune Monitoring Consortium (CTC-VIMC) is a key component of the Collaboration for AIDS Vaccine Discovery (CAVD), https://www.cavd.org/Pages/default.aspx. The CAVD is a “big science” approach funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to develop an effective vaccine against HIV/AIDS. This collaborative approach brings together a critical mass of HIV vaccine researchers focused on different aspects of HIV vaccine discovery.

The CTC-VIMC serves as the central T cell immune monitoring facility for the 14 CAVD consortia that pursue a range of innovative strategies to design an effective HIV vaccine. By providing standardized T cell assays for both non-human primate and clinical vaccine trials, the CTC-VIMC facilitates comparison of efficacy data from different vaccine development efforts across the CAVD; http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0014330.

Dr. Richard Koup, Chief of the Immunology Laboratory at the Dale and Betty Bumpers Vaccine Research Center (VRC), http://www.niaid.nih.gov/about/organization/vrc/Pages/default.aspx, at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), leads the CTC-VIMC, a five year $33 million initiative administered by the Foundation for NIH.  Nineteen investigators collaborate to improve T cell testing techniques, with four central clinical laboratories and three non-human primate laboratories that conduct assays to support HIV/AIDS vaccine development.