There are ~600,000 AIDS-related deaths globally each year, with women and girls accounting for over half. In Sub-Saharan Africa, women and girls represent 63% of all new HIV infections, highlighting the region's disproportionate burden; young women in that region are three times more likely than young men to become infected with HIV. In the continued absence of an effective vaccine against HIV, researchers across the globe have focused on development of new biomedical strategies to reduce infection with HIV.

Professor Karl Malcolm and Dr Peter Boyd in the School of Pharmacy have been at the forefront of global efforts to develop products to protect women against sexually transmitted infection with HIV. Extensive research over the past 25 years has resulted in the development of a silicone elastomer vaginal ring device—DapiRing®—offering user-controlled sustained release of the antiretroviral drug dapivirine. This has greatly impacted the direction and technology within the HIV prevention field.

Initial preclinical development work was conducted in collaboration with the International Partnership for Microbicides (IPM), a US-based non-profit product development partnership established in 2002. Phase 3 clinical trials were successfully completed in 2016, and a positive opinion from the European Medicines Agency was announced in July 2020. In 2022, IPM were acquired by Population Council. Since then, DapiRing® has been approved for use in 12 African countries. The success has spurred Queen's University Belfast and Population Council to develop various next-generation rings, including a new ring offering 3 months release of dapivirine and various multipurpose prevention technology (MPT) rings that combine HIV prevention with contraception (either hormonal or non-hormonal) and protection against other sexually transmitted infections (such as HPV, HSV, gonorrhoea and bacterial vaginosis).