IAS 2025 pre-conference: Co-infections, viral and host factors: Impact on HIV cure strategies

Caroline Tiemessen is a virologist and head of the Cell Biology Research Laboratory at the Centre for HIV and STIs, National Institute for Communicable Diseases of South Africa, and holds a joint appointment as Research Professor at the University of the Witwatersrand. Her research interests include the study of HIV vaccines and HIV cure (paediatric and adult) with a focus on early treatment models in paediatric HIV. Her research also focuses on natural resistance models, which include maternal-infant HIV-1 transmission for studying protective immunity to HIV-1, and long-term non-progressors and elite controllers to understand natural attenuation of disease progression.

Natalia Laufer is a researcher at the Argentinean Research Council, a member of the Advisory Council of the Hepatitis Program of the Argentine Ministry of Health, and the Secretary of the Hepatitis Commission of the Argentine Society of Infectious Diseases. She is also a Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Buenos Aires. She graduated as a physician at Favaloro University in 1999. She specialized in infectious diseases and gained her PhD from the University of Buenos Aires and postgraduate diploma in clinical trials from the University of London. Her research focuses on the basic mechanisms underlying latency in people with HIV and the immunological modulation of fibrosis associated with hepatitis C. 

Sharon Lewin is an infectious diseases physician and basic scientist with over 25 years of experience in the HIV field. The Immediate Past President of the IAS, Sharon is the Director of the Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity in Melbourne, Australia. Sharon is internationally recognized for her expertise in HIV cure, HIV/hepatitis B virus co-infection and SARS-CoV-2 infection. She leads a large group focused on basic and translational science and early-phase clinical trials for cure interventions and is actively developing antiviral strategies for novel RNA viruses using RNA editing. She has published over 350 manuscripts.