The Global Alliance to Immunize Against AIDS Vaccine Foundation (GAIA VF) is a Rhode Island-based non-profit organization.

Our mission is to promote the development of a not-for-profit HIV vaccine to the developing world by supporting collaborative programs in affected communities.

GAIA VF believes that an HIV vaccine should be distributed at no cost to individuals living in developing nations, should be built using strains of HIV that circulate in countries most afflicted by HIV/AIDS and should use technology that will work in those parts of the world. 

Making an HIV vaccine that is “not-for-profit” and “globally relevant” requires a new way of thinking about vaccines in general, and HIV vaccines, in particular. 

No other groups have proposed to develop a globally relevant HIV vaccine; most are working on country-specific approaches.  Nor have other groups proposed to make an HIV vaccine available at no cost to persons at risk of HIV infection in the developing world; most HIV vaccines are being developed by for-profit companies. 

HIV medications are now being distributed at no cost in some countries.  GAIA VF proposes to extend that model to vaccines.

GAIA VF’s founder, Dr. Anne De Groot, is associate professor of medicine at Brown Medical School and CEO of EpiVax, a for-profit biotech company. She has been an active participant in research and educational efforts in West Africa since 1989; traveling extensively and repeatedly to collaborate with scientists in the Gambia, Senegal, and Mali. She is a board-certified physician and infectious disease specialist who has been practicing HIV care in limited-resource settings in the United States since 1989. Her area of clinical expertise is HIV care for marginalized populations (See publications and journal at IDCRonline.org). Her vaccine research has been continuously NIH funded since 1992.