Location:
Kirby Institute, Level 6 Seminar Room, Wallace Wurth Building, UNSW
Open to
All
Contact for enquiries
02 9385 0900
Professor David Cooper - "Antiretroviral therapy."
Abstract:
Combination therapy has saved countless lives. However, we know it to be imperfect and we are always looking for ways to improve outcomes. For treatment-naïve patients, it is time either to optimise the dose of efavirenz, or replace it altogether with integrase inhibitors in combination with two nucleosides. For people requiring a second-line treatment, the SECONDLINE study confirmed the current WHO standard of care but also indicated a novel approach of two new classes of drug therapy in combination, as a public health approach without the need for expensive resistance testing. This brings us to early treatment, which is now simple, non-toxic and beneficial in reducing transmission, but about which there has been push-back in the context of insufficient resources to cover the existing number of people needing treatment.
Biography :
Scientia Professor David Cooper AO, is a Professor of Medicine at the University of New South Wales and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science (FAA). Professor Cooper is Director of the Kirby Institute for infection and immunity in society, Sydney, Australia. The Kirby Institute is funded by the Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing, to conduct research into the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Australia, with the ultimate aim of reducing the burden of the HIV/AIDS epidemic for the affected community. Professor Cooper is a consultant physician to the HIV Immunology Service at St Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney and is a Director of HIV-NAT, a clinical research and trials collaboration based at the Thai Red Cross AIDS Research Centre at the Chulalongkorn University Hospital in Bangkok, Thailand. He is a past President of the International AIDS Society (IAS).