DURBAN, South Africa – Name a persistent disease that is hard to detect and measure, that can come back after it looks like you've beat it, and that should be controlled by the immune system but isn't.

DURBAN, South Africa – The 21st International AIDS Conference officially kicked off Monday. But over the weekend, two days of pre-conferences have already addressed a multitude of aspects of the epidemic.

In-depth characterization of the immune response to Zika virus infection confirmed that cross-reactive antibodies to dengue and Zika could enhance infection, but also showed that antibodies to E protein domain III (EDIII) were specific to Zika virus and could protect mice from otherwise lethal Zika virus infection.

As far as clinical use goes, checkpoint inhibitors are furthest along, with four approved therapies and dozens of others wending their way through clinical trials. But perhaps no cancer immunotherapy has captured the public's imagination like chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells, despite the fact that there are not yet any FDA-approved CAR T cells.

Jedd Wolchok is apparently not one to rest on his laurels. As the principal investigator on the 024 study that led to approval of the first commercially successful cancer immunotherapy, CTLA-4 checkpoint inhibitor Yervoy (ipilimumab, Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.) as well as several phase III trials investigating the combination of Yervoy and PD-1 checkpoint blocker Opdivo (nivolumab, Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.), Wolchok has done as much as anyone currently working in oncology for patients.

Researchers have isolated a broadly neutralizing antibody (bnAb) to HIV from an infant who had been infected for roughly a year, showing that bnAbs can in principle develop more rapidly than they usually do.

Structural studies published this week indicated there are antigens that would make it feasible to create a broad-spectrum vaccine that would simultaneously protect against both Zika and dengue virus.

In the justified worries about drug resistance, it tends to get somewhat lost that there is, as yet, no completely untreatable superbug. The colistin resistance gene mcr-1 that was detected on plasmids in China and Europe in 2015, and in the US in 2016, has not yet met up with a bacterium that is resistant to all other drugs.