Editor’s Note: The Center for Comparative Medicine learned Thursday afternoon that Willie Brown will not be able to participate in the Friday AIDS research event.

More than 300 scientists, health care professionals and students are expected to gather at UC Davis on Sept. 25 to commemorate the significant role that California played in the early years of research on AIDS and human immunodeficiency virus.

The daylong event, including a series of nontechnical presentations, is free and open to the public. Organizers said the program will survey some 25 years of work that followed the discovery of HIV-1 as the cause of acquired immune deficiency syndrome. Speakers will discuss AIDS diagnostic and treatment efforts, epidemiology, animal models, basic research and future research directions.

Françoise Barré-Sinoussi of the Pasteur Institute in Paris will deliver the keynote address, organizers said. She and fellow virologist Luc Montagnier received the 2008 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for discovering HIV.

Also participating, organizers said, will be former state Assemblyman Willie Brown, who, as speaker of the Assembly in the early days of the epidemic, played a critical role in securing research funding.

AIDS was recognized as a new disease in 1981, and the first research papers appeared in scientific journals in 1983. Scientists, physicians and policymakers around the world joined forces to tackle the mysterious disease.

“The 1980s were a time of fear and hysteria as the AIDS epidemic spread,” said Murray Gardner, a UC Davis professor emeritus of medical pathology and an authority on immunodeficiency viruses in humans and monkeys.

One of UC Davis’ most important contributions to the AIDS research effort was focused on AIDS-like viruses in monkeys and cats, providing invaluable comparisons to how the virus was behaving in people.

During the 1980s and ’90s, UC Davis scientists further explored the natural history of the AIDS viruses that affect humans, monkeys and cats, including how such viruses might be transmitted from one animal species to another. They also studied the feasibility of developing an AIDS vaccine; the mechanisms that allow the viruses, particularly feline AIDS, to be transmitted; and how the body’s own antibodies and immune systems fight these viruses. Several novel antiviral treatments were developed in these animal models.

Today, the World Health Organization estimates the number of people living with AIDS at 33 million around the world, new HIV infection in 2.7 million people annually, and more than 2 million AIDS deaths each year.

Future AIDS research

California-based researchers and others are continuing their efforts through clinical trials, studies of viral immunity based in the body’s mucous membranes, and studies of the impact of AIDS on women and minorities.

“Although HIV has been identified and effective drugs discovered to extend the length and quality of life for people infected with the virus, AIDS remains a complex problem that is still evolving,” said Paul Luciw, a UC Davis molecular virologist who studies AIDS-related animal viruses.

Twenty-five to 30 drugs are approved for treating HIV, Luciw said, but resistance and toxicity are problems with all of them. “We still need better drug regimens and, of course, a vaccine to prevent HIV,” he said. “And we still need a cure.”

Luciw and Gardner said the new generation of AIDS researchers can learn from both the achievements and challenges of the scientists who came before them. “They will need to continue the spirit of collaboration, building consortiums of both private and public laboratories and institutions,” Gardner said. “And they will need to be more aware of the international issues that impact AIDS.”

UC Davis’ Center for Comparative Medicine is coordinating the commemoration. The center, a collaboration of the schools of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine, studies diseases that affect both people and animals.

Registration and more information. The event is set to take place at the Center for Comparative Medicine on County Road 98, west of the central campus.