On 1 December, World AIDS Day, the global community reflects on the state of the HIV epidemic and recommits to action. In 2024, an estimated 40.8 million people were living with HIV, with around 630,000 AIDS-related deaths.1 Yet the year has also brought new challenges: shifting political priorities, funding pressure, and widening inequalities have disrupted essential HIV services in many regions. Against this backdrop, the 2025 theme, “Overcoming disruption, transforming the AIDS response”, highlights the need for resilient systems and innovative tools.2
One of the most important pillars of transformation remains robust HIV drug-resistance surveillance. As sequencing technologies continue to diversify, next-generation sequencing (NGS) and Sanger sequencing both play valuable roles in supporting high-quality HIV genotyping. NGS offers greater depth and can detect minority variants, while Sanger remains a widely trusted, reliable method used across global HIV programmes. A 2024 study, for example, showed that incorporating NGS can reveal additional resistance mutations, thereby complementing established Sanger-based insights.3
At Hyrax Biosciences, we remain committed to supporting this transformation through Exatype, our cloud-based platform that supports multiple sequencing technologies, and ensures clarity, consistency and confidence across both Sanger and NGS workflows. In our analytical validation studies, comparing Sanger sequence data with NGS sequence data (Illumina and Oxford Nanopore Technologies), and using Exatype as the standardised pipeline in all cases, we observed >98.7% concordance between platforms. These results demonstrate that Exatype provides consistent and reliable HIV-1 genotyping regardless of technology, ensuring that labs can choose the approach that best suits their needs.
As we observe World AIDS Day, the global HIV response continues to depend on adaptable diagnostics, high-quality bioinformatics, and standardised analysis pipelines. Hyrax Biosciences remains ready to partner with laboratories, programmes, and public-health agencies to strengthen HIV-1 resistance testing and support resilient, scalable surveillance worldwide. For Hyrax Biosciences and our Exatype platform, World AIDS Day is not only a moment of reflection, but a call to action: to continue to support the fight against HIV-1, to enable robust drug-resistance reporting, and to ensure that no one is left behind in the era of precision HIV-care.
References
- “HIV data and statistics”, World Health Organization.
https://www.who.int/teams/global-hiv-hepatitis-and-stis-programmes/hiv/strategic-information/hiv-data-and-statistics - World AIDS Day, UNAIDS
https://www.unaids.org/en/World_AIDS_Day - Nannyonjo M et al., “Next-Generation Sequencing Reveals a High Frequency of HIV-1 Minority Variants and an Expanded Drug Resistance Profile among Individuals on First-Line ART”, 2024
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39339930/
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