Biomedical research focusing on specific moments of opportunity in the development and transmission of HIV could lead to remarkable gains in the battle against the disease, according to Anthony Fauci, MD, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the NIH.

At the XVII International AIDS Conference, held last month in Mexico City, Fauci addressed the future of HIV/AIDS research. He cited five areas toward which AIDS research should be focused in the immediate future: pathogenesis, diagnosis and monitoring, therapy, prevention and vaccines.

“The pathogenesis research of the future will be focused on areas such as the structural biological studies of the components of HIV and how they interact with host factors both intracellular, receptor-mediated, cellular and humoral,” Fauci said. “Host genetics has loomed large, particularly over the last year or two, in informing us about an individual’s propensity to progress or not.”

Fauci also praised the way biomedical research has been applied to therapy programs and how the resulting drugs have affected people with HIV. That effect has been “a major success story with a big caveat,” he said. “The big caveat is that there are so many people that need to be on therapy who do not have access to therapy.”

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