"Seeking to foster innovation in this field, let us continue the principles
of LEAP – serving as a resource, to share knowledge, to create a robust pipeline
of concepts for HIV, and in so doing, help advance LA concepts to meet the
unmet medical needs in HIV and other fields of medicine."
Speaker: Carl Dieffenbach: Director of DAIDS, NIAID at NIH
Dr. Dieffenbach expressed excitement about recent advances and growth in the LA field, citing FDA approval of the first injectable HIV regimen and the first injectable option for HIV PrEP as well as numerous emerging development programs from Industry. He reminded attendees of our collective goal: to address the weakest link in drug-based strategies for chronic diseases – patient adherence. LA/ER formulations have great potential to eliminate pill fatigue, forgetfulness, missed doses, and stigma, yet development is slow, costly and high risk, and there is still much work to be done. Optimizing patient satisfaction and ultimately success, will require expanding delivery solutions, improving pharmacological profiles with fewer side effects, and expanding development activities outside of HIV. Looking forward, he emphasized the value of learning from every success and failure, the need for collaboration, and LEAP’s critical role in centralizing investigator resources and the growing knowledge landscape to facilitate development.