About the Authors

Melanie Thompson

Contributed equally to this work with: Melanie Thompson, Harriet L. Robinson

drmt@mindspring.com

Affiliation AIDS Research Consortium of Atlanta, Atlanta, Georgia, United States of America

Sonya L. Heath

‡ These authors also contributed equally to this work.

Affiliation Department of Medicine, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, United States of America

Bentley Sweeton

‡ These authors also contributed equally to this work.

Affiliation AIDS Research Consortium of Atlanta, Atlanta, Georgia, United States of America

Kathy Williams

‡ These authors also contributed equally to this work.

Affiliation AIDS Research Consortium of Atlanta, Atlanta, Georgia, United States of America

Pamela Cunningham

‡ These authors also contributed equally to this work.

Affiliation Alabama Vaccine Research Clinic, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, United States of America

Brandon F. Keele

Affiliation AIDS and Cancer Virus Program, Leidos Biomedical Research, Inc., Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research, Frederick, Maryland, United States of America

Sharon Sen

Affiliation University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, Aurora, Colorado, United States of America

Brent E. Palmer

Affiliation University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, Aurora, Colorado, United States of America

Nicolas Chomont

Affiliation Centre de recherche du CHUM and Department of Microbiology, Infectiology and Immunology, Université de Montréal, Montreal, Canada

Yongxian Xu

Affiliation Hope Clinic of the Emory Vaccine Center, Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Medicine, School of Medicine, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, United States of America

Rahul Basu

Affiliation GeoVax, Inc., Atlanta, Georgia, United States of America

Michael S. Hellerstein

‡ These authors also contributed equally to this work.

Affiliation GeoVax, Inc., Atlanta, Georgia, United States of America

Suefen Kwa

Current address: ViiV Healthcare, Research Triangle Park, NC

‡ These authors also contributed equally to this work.

Affiliation GeoVax, Inc., Atlanta, Georgia, United States of America

Harriet L. Robinson

Contributed equally to this work with: Melanie Thompson, Harriet L. Robinson

Affiliation GeoVax, Inc., Atlanta, Georgia, United States of America

Competing Interests

HLR is a co-founder of GeoVax, Inc., owns stock in GeoVax and is an employee of GeoVax. This does not alter her adherence to PLOS policies on sharing data and materials. YX and SK are former employees of GeoVax. RB and MSH are current employees of GeoVax. This does not alter their adherence to PLOS policies on sharing data and materials. There are no patents or pending patent applications for therapeutic immunization with this product. MT, BS, KW are employees of AIDS Research Consortium of Atlanta, which received funding from GeoVax for the conduct of the trial. SH is an employee of University of Alabama, Birmingham, which received funding from GeoVax for the conduct of the trial.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization: HLR MT BS. Formal analysis: HLR MT SK. Funding acquisition: HLR. Investigation: MT BS KW SH PC SK YX RB MH BK SS BP NC. Methodology: HLR MT BS SK. Resources: HLR. Visualization: MT RB SK HLR. Writing – original draft: HLR MT. Writing – review & editing: MT HLR SH SK.