Abbott has a central IRB which is already familiar with the drug and can approve applications quickly, but medical centers which have their own IRB often require their doctors to use it. Those who have no approved drugs likely to work for them may want to wait for at least one more experimental drug, to reduce the risk of losing ABT-378 as well. This year was more important than most, and had more good news than bad, although many of the developments were too technical to get much attention in the mainstream press.
Extensive coverage is available on the Web.
We recommend checking at least the first three sites listed here, scanning the titles and reading the specific reports of interest. Coverage of 18 conference sections by a number of physicians. One to two paragraphs each on many news reports from the conference. Journal of the American Medical Association site. It has more than a dozen Reuters reports on HIV news from the conference.