Agathe Leon´s group
Description
Our group works in three different areas of the AIDS research group integrated at IDIBAPS. These areas are line 3 of immunopatogenia and vaccines, line 9 of prevention strategies (PEP and PREP) and line 12 of new models of care.
Main areas of interest in line 3 are pathogenic mechanisms linked to the absence of viral infection after exposure to HIV in Highly Exposed Persistently Seronegative subjects, replication control and immune response to the virus on HIV controllers. In collaboration with other Spanish investigators we have created few years ago the Elite controllers working group of the Spanish AIDS Research Network. Research projects evaluating loss of virologic and immunological control of controllers are ongoing projects.
In the area of prevention strategies our group coordinates in Hospital Clinic the PEP clinic attending yearly 1400 individuals with an HIV risk exposition. We have done several clinical trials evaluating different cART in PEP. We are currently participating in an European joint action called INTEGRATE which has the aim of integrating prevention, testing and link to care strategies across HIV, viral hepatitis, TB and STIs in Europe.
Line 12 of new models chronic HIV stable patients is focus on the development of new strategies for caring chronic patients in a non hospital-based manner, such as through non face to face consultations using telemedicine [ (internet) or mheath (application through mobile devices)] or sharing HIV care with general providers. This group has been running a Virtual Hospital for patients living with stable HIV since 2005. The Virtual Hospital is an internet based home-care system that offers virtual consultations, telepharmacy, a virtual library of information and a virtual community. Nowadays this virtual clinic has become clinical routine and we are currently involved in an Horizon2020 research project (EMERGE, grant agreement no: 643736) to validate a mobile application platform in 4000 stable patients.