Emory’s Division of Infectious Diseases shines at CROI 2025

Earlier this month, many of our Infectious Diseases colleagues attended the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) in San Francisco, California. This year’s event focused on the urgent need to protect funding for HIV research and critical programs like PEPFAR, Ryan White, AIDS Drug Assistance Program, etc. Without sustained support, modeling studies predict a substantial increase in AIDS-related deaths and a rise in children orphaned by HIV.  

Some event highlights include: 

• Once-Yearly Lenacapavir for HIV Prevention: Phase 1 data supports its potential as a yearly PrEP option, with a Phase 3 trial launching in late 2025. 
• New PURPOSE 1 Data: Strong preference for twice-yearly Lenacapavir over daily PrEP, plus key insights into adolescent safety and efficacy. 
• AI & HIV Prevention and Care: AI models are being studied to help guide interventions to tailor HIV care and prevention using data-driven approaches. Carlos S. Saldana conducted a pre-meeting workshop on Machine Learning to Focus on HIV Prevention Interventions. 
• Martin Delaney lecture by Rebecca Denison. Rebecca is a woman who was diagnosed with HIV in the 1990s and she shared her story of her life in parallel to scientific advances. She talked about the community of advocates she joined and her decision to publicly disclose her HIV status despite the enormous stigma at the time. As HIV medicine advanced, her marriage with her HIV-uninfected husband stayed discordant and, after participating in a clinical trial, she gave birth to two beautiful daughters who are HIV uninfected. Her daughters, husband, and the physician who delivered her daughters were all present at the conference. 
• Graeme Meintjes, a leading tuberculosis researcher, public health advocate, and WHO contributor in South Africa talked about early results of a treatment trial for disseminated tuberculosis showing harm with high dose anti-tuberculous therapy and the potential benefit of adjunctive steroids.   

Emory was well-represented with 49 presentations (7 talks, 42 posters). We also celebrate our New Investigator Scholarship recipients: 

• Kamaria Dansby, Jairo Fonseca, Simon Yang, Ashvini Vaidya, Felipe Ten-Caten, Tehillah Chinunga 

“I distinctly remember standing in the back of a packed room hearing about how lenacapavir, an injectable HIV medicine that has revolutionized HIV treatment and prevention with twice yearly dosing was effective when dosed annually. To my left was another Infectious Diseases fellow I had only met previously virtually and to my right was my Emory mentor, Vince Marconi. I usually would be grumpy about standing in the back, but in this case, there was a sense of belonging in having real time, albeit murmured, discussions about the relevance to our practice. My mentor checked his phone subtly during the talk and, after a brief smile, couldn’t help himself as he quietly whispered, “An eighth person was just cured of HIV.”
—Emily Evans, Infectious Disease Fellow