Successes in HIV-1 Vaccine Design: Accelerating Completion of One of Sciences’ Most Difficult Vaccines – Dr Kevin Saunders

In episode 69 of Going anti-Viral, Dr Kevin Saunders joins host Dr Michael Saag to discuss a plenary presentation he gave at the 2026 Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) entitled Successes in HIV-1 Vaccine Design: Accelerating Completion of One of Sciences’ Most Difficult Vaccines. Dr Saunders is the associate director for the Duke Human Vaccine Institute and the Norman L. Letvin Professor in Immunology and Infectious Diseases Research. Dr Saunders leads a translational research program that designs and evaluates HIV-1 vaccines. Dr Saunders shares his journey from studying T-cell immunity to pioneering HIV vaccine research. He discusses the challenges of developing an HIV vaccine, the promise of broad neutralizing antibodies, and the innovative use of mRNA technology. Dr Saunders also shares his outlook and optimism for the next 5 years of HIV vaccine development including the use machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies to accelerate the development timeline.

0:00 – Introduction

1:36 – Path to HIV research and vaccine development

3:50 – Understanding T-cell immunity and HIV

6:53 – Transition to passive immunity and broad neutralizing antibodies

11:35 – Challenges in developing an HIV vaccine

15:25 – Current state of HIV vaccine research

17:38 – The role of immunogens in vaccine development

20:30 – Combining B-cell and T-cell responses

24:59 – Prospect for a HIV vaccine within the next 5 years

Resources:

CROI 2026: https://www.croiconference.org/

Duke Human Vaccine Institute - https://dhvi.duke.edu/

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Produced by IAS-USA, Going anti–Viral is a podcast for clinicians involved in research and care in HIV, its complications, and other viral infections. This podcast is intended as a technical source of information for specialists in this field, but anyone listening will enjoy learning more about the state of modern medicine around viral infections.

Going anti-Viral’s host is Dr Michael Saag, a physician, prominent HIV researcher at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and volunteer IAS–USA board member. In most episodes, Dr Saag interviews an expert in infectious diseases or emerging pandemics about their area of specialty and current developments in the field. Other episodes are drawn from the IAS–USA vast catalogue of panel discussions, Dialogues, and other audio from various meetings and conferences.

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