About AIDS

One of the world's premier gatherings of health scientists and physicians is the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, or ICAAC, this year from Oct. 30-Nov. 2 in Washington, D.C. (The Ick-ack conference may not sound very promising, but trust me – this is one of the very best!) ICAAC is devoted to infectious diseases and antimicrobial agents, i.e., the drugs used in treatment and vaccines. ICAAC is not AIDS-specific, but many attendees will be there for its cutting-edge HIV information.

On Thursday, Nov. 4, ASA will hold another in its Dining With the Doctor education series, with Amadou Diagne as guest speaker. Talk about information hot off the presses: Mr. Diagne will be literally coming from the conference as he stops in Austin to share what of importance he learned at ICAAC.

While not actually a physician, Amadou Diagne is one of the world's noted virologists working on HIV. In 1986, Mr. Diagne co-founded the UCLA School of Medicine's famed AIDS Institute Virology Laboratory, which he ran until 1996. While there, he led the team that isolated two key HIV strains, and he developed techniques to measure viral load, disease progression, and the effectiveness of experimental treatments. He has published articles in the New England Journal of Medicine, AIDS, Journal of Infectious Diseases, and Nature.

Since 1999, Mr. Diagne has been an HIV/AIDS medical science liaison between pharmaceutical manufacturers, scientists, physicians, and patients. Currently he works with Gilead Sciences, the maker of Viread and Emtriva.

Dinner with Amadou Diagne will be at 6pm on Thursday, Nov. 4, at ASA, 7215 Cameron Rd. (just north of St. Johns). The evening is free, thanks to the generous sponsorship of Gilead. Seating is limited, so let us save you a place: To RSVP call 458-AIDS (458-2437) or e-mail [email protected].