Abstracts
CROI 2012 CALL FOR ABSTRACTS
The Scientific Program Committee invites papers of high quality in the areas of HIV research. Abstract submissions are peer-reviewed for scientific content, logical presentation, timelines, and current interest of the topic to the scientific community.
DEADLINE FOR ABSTRACT SUBMISSION
Abstracts should be submitted electronically no later than 5 pm ET, October 5, 2011.
DEADLINE FOR LATE BREAKER ABSTRACT SUBMISSION
Abstracts should be submitted electronically no later than 5 pm ET, January 17, 2012.
GENERAL GUIDELINES
All submitted abstracts should report new information not previously published or presented at a national or international scientific meeting before March 5, 2012. Please note that abstracts previously presented at other meetings will not be considered unless there is a substantial update of data.
Abstracts should contain the following four components (please bold the four section headings noted below within the text of your abstract submission).
Background: a concise statement of the issue under investigation or a hypothesis
Methods: the experimental methods used (including the statistical analyses employed)
Results: specific findings (promises such as “to be completed” or “to be presented” are not acceptable)
Conclusions: a summary of findings that are supported by your results (statistical analyses used to support the conclusions, where appropriate, should be included; concluding statements such as “the results will be discussed” are not acceptable)
Please do not include grant acknowledgements, literature references, or copyright or trademark symbols.
Multiple abstracts reporting results from the same study and overlapping abstracts from the same group of investigators are strongly discouraged. Multiple abstracts considered to be the result of excessive splitting of data will be evaluated and scored accordingly. To accommodate additional submissions, the Program Committee may request that such multiple submissions be combined and that a revised abstract be provided.
Abstracts are considered official communications to the conference. Individuals submitting abstracts that are accepted agree to attend the meeting and present their abstract as scheduled (as an oral abstract, poster, and/or themed discussion presentations, as determined by the Program Committee). Once an abstract has been accepted and scheduled, it cannot be withdrawn. Failure to present the scheduled abstract without prior notification of extenuating circumstances to the Conference Secretariat may result in forfeiture of attendance at future meetings.
REQUIRED ABSTRACT FORMAT
Subject Category: For scoring and scheduling purposes, abstracts will be divided into the categories listed below. Please read through the entire list (A-Z) before identifying the subject category, as selection of the wrong area may delay review of the abstract. To ensure the submission is read by the appropriate review team, the Program Committee may reassign an abstract to an alternate category.
CROI 2012 Abstract Submission Categories
A. Virology (all in vitro studies, incl HIV, XMRV, and all other retroviruses)
B. Molecular Epidemiology: Distribution and Diversity of Retroviruses (excl HIV drug resistance)
C. HIV Immunology [how the immune system affects HIV]
D. Pathogenesis and Immunopathogenesis [how HIV affects the immune system] (incl ex vivo studies using cells or tissues from infected humans or experimental animals)
E. Neuropathogenesis and Neurologic Complications
F. HIV Transmission and Primary/Acute Infection
G. Gene Therapy, Immune-based Therapies, and Vaccines
I. Human Genomics
J. Antiretroviral Therapy-Preclinical
K. Antiretroviral Therapy-Randomized Clinical Trials
L. Antiretroviral Therapy-Observational Studies
M. HIV Drug Resistance (incl molecular mechanisms, pathogenesis, clinical implications, epidemiology, and resistance diagnostics)
N. All Clinical Pharmacology (all studies of drug pharmacology and pharmacodynamics)
O. Complications of HIV Infection and Antiretroviral Therapy
P. Tuberculosis and other Opportunistic Infections (incl basic and clinical studies on bacterial, fungal, and parasitic and non-hepatitis viral infections)
Q. Hepatitis Viruses (incl diagnosis, epidemiology, pathogenesis, and therapy)
R. All AIDS-related Malignancies
S. Pediatrics/Adolescents (incl any/all studies specifically of children)
T. Maternal/Fetal (incl any/all studies specifically of mothers and their babies, especially MTCT)
U. HIV in Women/Women’s Health (incl any/all studies specifically of women)
V. HIV Clinical Diagnostics (incl sero-diagnosis and HIV RNA measurement; any abstracts dealing with resistance, complications, opportunistic infections, hepatitis, or malignancies should be submitted to those respective categories)
W. Epidemiology of HIV Infection (excl HIV drug resistance)
X. Sexually Transmitted Infections (non-HIV incl basic science, immunology, pathogenesis, epidemiology, and other clinical studies)
Y. Prevention Intervention Studies (incl microbicides, pre-exposure prophylaxis, circumcision, and behavioral interventions)
Z. Research on Delivery of Care in Developing Countries (abstracts dealing specifically with scaleup only; abstracts related to a specialty area such as ART, resistance, complications, opportunistic infections, pediatrics, or HIV in women should be submitted to those respective categories)
Title: Use a concise title that indicates the content of the abstract. Capitalize the first letter of each word except prepositions, articles and species names. Specific names of microorganisms should be italicized.
Authors: Authors’ names should be typed in upper- and lowercase letters (please do not use all capital letters). Use first name and last name. The author presenting the paper must be designated. Do not include academic degrees or titles. Note there is a limit of 10 authors per abstract.
Affiliations: Each author should be listed by institution, city, state (US based authors only), and country. Do not include department, division, laboratory, etc.
Abstract Body: Abstracts are limited to 2,500 characters (this includes spaces).
GUIDELINES FOR SUBMISSION
Abstracts must be submitted online at www.retroconference.org. The abstract body must be uploaded as either a Microsoft Word (.doc) or Rich Text Format (.rtf) document.
Help for submitting abstracts electronically appears on the website. Submitters will be prompted through the electronic submission process.
Please carefully review the abstract prior to its submission. Note that if an abstract has been entered but the final submission button is not clicked, it is not technically submitted and therefore will not be reviewed.
Again this year: edits to an abstract (other than changing subject category) may be made online after submission up and until the deadline of 5 pm ET, October 5, 2011. Do not submit multiple submissions of the same abstract with incremental changes over the internet.
SOME TYPICAL REASONS FOR ABSTRACT REJECTION ARE:
- Abstract poorly written
- Not enough new information
- Hypothesis missing
- Methods inadequate or insufficient to support conclusions
- Data inadequate or insufficient to support conclusions
- Insufficient sample size or number of patients
- Controls inadequate or missing
- Statistical evaluation inadequate or missing
- Summary of essential results inadequate or missing
- Duplicate or overlap with another abstract
- Study is too preliminary
- Inappropriate for CROI
GUIDELINES FOR ABSTRACTS DESCRIBING CLINICAL STUDIES
All abstracts reporting data from clinical trials of human subjects should contain:
- A statement indicating the study design such as “prospective, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled...”
- A description of the subject population including numbers enrolled, demographic information (sex and race/ethnicity) and the experimental methods used
- A statement indicating whether or not the results are preliminary or final and whether or not the study is ongoing or completed
- A concise description of the statistical analyses employed
- Specific findings or results, including results of statistical analysis used to support the conclusions
- Specific conclusions based on the results described
Abstracts reporting data from unplanned interim analyses of ongoing or incomplete studies are not acceptable. Strong preference will be given to studies that are prospective, randomized, and controlled, that provide observations of at least 24 weeks duration, and that include an intent-to-treat analysis, where appropriate. Adequately powered negative studies (major) will be considered.
The presenting author should have access to all of the raw data and be able to lead the discussion of the data, should have participated in the analysis, and should be able to answer substantive questions about the study.
GUIDELINES FOR ABSTRACTS DESCRIBING NEW COMPOUNDS
Abstracts submitted dealing with the isolation, purification, structure-activity relationships, mechanism of action, in vitro activity and toxicity, or PK/PD in animals must include data (e.g., structure, virologic activity, cytotoxicity, AUC, Cmax, Cmin, CL, T1/2, Emax, EC50, etc.) sufficient to allow for a meaningful understanding of the work and scientific exchange. In particular, it is expected that the chemical structure of any new (i.e., previously unpublished) compound will be made available at the time of presentation. It is recognized that there might be occasional instances where a scientifically compelling presentation might not include structural information. During the online submission process, submitters will be asked to confirm their intention to present structural data or explain why they do not plan to do so. For any cases where an abstract presentation would not include corresponding structural information, the Program Committee will weigh this decision not to present structural information during the scientific review and disposition of the abstract. If a commitment made at the time the abstract submission to include structural information as part of the presentation is not honored at the time of the meeting, the presenting author may be penalized by prohibition from presenting at CROI for up to 2 years.
HOW ABSTRACTS ARE SELECTED
Abstract submissions will be peer reviewed by the Scientific Program Committee and a panel of ad hoc reviewers. To minimize subjectivity in the scoring process, any reviewer with a conflict of interest (as defined by NIH rules, e.g., co-authorship, financial interest, or scientific/personal conflict with the authors that could affect objectivity of scoring) will be excluded from scoring or discussing the abstract in question. In the final rankings, mean score and standard deviation will be calculated, and the reviewers’ scores will be anonymous. Abstract acceptance is based upon abstract quality, the potential significance of the observations, and the rigor with which the scientific methods were applied. Further, the Program Committee considers thematic balance in determining which abstracts will be presented orally.
PREFERRED REGISTRATION
Preferred Registration for all abstract authors (with accepted submissions) will be available November 28-December 5. Please note, in order to register during this early period, it is necessary that separate email addresses for authors be provided at the time of abstract submission (the same address cannot be used for multiple authors as pre-approval requires a unique identifier for each individual). Authors for which no email address was provided, will not be able to register until the opening of General Registration (December 6).
NOTIFICATION AND CORRESPONDENCE
Authors should print and keep a copy of the receipt screen on the web site as verification of receipt. Abstract dispositions will be e-mailed to the contact listed on the abstract on or around November 28, 2011. It is the responsibility of the contact to inform co-authors about an abstract’s disposition.
LATE BREAKER ABSTRACTS
Abstracts that contain new data not available at the original abstract deadline may be submitted for consideration for presentation during oral abstract sessions during the conference. Only abstracts containing novel, cutting-edge information will be considered. Because of the limited number of slots and the nature of late breakers, very few submissions will be accepted for presentation (in previous years, 8-20 abstracts have been accepted, representing a 5-10% acceptance rate). Late Breaker abstracts must be submitted via the Internet (www.retroconference.org). The deadline for late breaker abstract submission is 5 pm ET, January 17, 2012.
PUBLISHED ABSTRACTS
Accepted abstracts will be published in the Program and Abstracts of the 19th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections and distributed to registrants. In addition, all abstracts will be posted on the web site.
COPYRIGHT AND WEBCAST POLICY
By submitting an abstract, authors and co-authors transfer any copyrights and grant permission to CROI to audio/video record oral presentations for conference webcasts.