The HPTN 052 results were headline news at IAS 2011. Principal Investigator Myron Cohen, MD, talked with the IAS about the years of work that went into the trial, the research team’s emotions upon first learning the results, and the weeks that followed. Dr. Cohen is Associate Vice Chancellor for Global Health and Director of the Institute for Global Health & Infectious Diseases at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

By Scott Sanders

As Myron Cohen and his colleagues finished presenting the results of the HPTN 052 trial to a packed room at IAS 2011, the audience rose to its feet in a standing ovation. It was a rare occurrence at a scientific meeting, reflecting the significance of the results and the tremendous efforts behind them.

The emotions of Cohen and his team members that July afternoon in Rome were a far cry from those they had felt less than three months before. Heading back to the Washington, DC, airport after a regularly scheduled meeting with the study’s Data and Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB) on 28 April 2011, the researchers feared the study might be about to come to an end. The research team was completely blinded to the study results data and some of the unusual actions of the DSMB members in the meeting that day had them fearing the worst. More...