Industry Liaison Forum | International AIDS Society (IAS)

The Industry Liaison Forum was established in 2001 to promote and facilitate the full contribution of the biomedical industry to the global HIV response. It does this by catalysing multi-stakeholder dialogue, engagement and action to address barriers along the HIV prevention, diagnosis and care continuum. Its members are from industry (originator and generic biopharmaceutical, diagnostic and other health-technology companies) and non-industry organizations. They share a wealth of perspectives, expertise and knowledge to contribute together to the HIV response.

The Forum’s strategic plan for 2020-2023 highlights its commitment to further build on its unique neutrality, convening power, multi-stakeholder composition and rules of engagement to strengthen its contribution to the HIV response. To achieve this, it:

Engages and grows membership by continuing to be a cross-stakeholder, neutral, safe-space platform that actively expands and engages its membership base to foster connections, dialogue and action.
Accelerates priority areas by addressing barriers along the HIV prevention, diagnosis and care continuum.
Publishes and promotes members’ perspectives to advance the global HIV response.

Interested in joining? Please contact [email protected].

Case Studies

Case study 1: Accelerating access to long-acting HIV prevention and treatment formulations and delivery platforms

In 2022, the Forum, with Medicines Patent Pool (MPP), brought together partners through a three-part roundtable series to drive the conversation on what is needed to accelerate the introduction and scale up of long-acting technologies in low- and middle-income countries. Building on this roundtable series, a satellite session was organized at AIDS 2022 (watch here and find the report here). These discussions led to the official AIDS 2022 press release on breaking news about ViiV and MPP’s voluntary licensing agreement for patents relating to CAB-LA for PrEP. Access the roundtable materials here.

Case study 2: WHO Prequalification of In Vitro Diagnostics

In 2018, Forum industry partners published a perspective on World Health Organization (WHO) Prequalification of In Vitro Diagnostics in Clinical Infectious Diseases. In 2022, the Forum coordinated a roundtable discussion with representatives of regulatory and normative agencies, as well as the diagnostics and pharmaceutical industry, to introduce the newly published WHO collaborative procedure. This is a tool for national regulatory authorities that wish to enhance their pre-marketing and post-registration evaluation and registration of in vitro diagnostics. To access the roundtable materials, click here.

Case study 3: The GAP-f

The Global Accelerator for Paediatric Formulations (GAP-f) resulted from collaboration between members of the Forum, the IAS Collaborative Initiative for Paediatric HIV Education and Research (CIPHER) and WHO. Forum corporate partners working with international stakeholders steered the agenda and efforts to create GAP-f.

Case study 4: Policy brief on innovative digital technologies

Forum corporate partners, with international stakeholders, reviewed learnings from the COVID-19 response to recommend a set of innovative technologies that should be scaled up for better HIV prevention and treatment. To read the blog post on this topic, click here.