About the Authors

Craig W. Hendrix

chendrix@jhmi.edu

Affiliation Department of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America

Beatrice A. Chen

Affiliation Center for Family Planning Research and Magee-Womens Research Institute, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States of America

Vijayanand Guddera

Affiliation South African Medical Research Council, Durban, South Africa

Craig Hoesley

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

Jessica Justman

Affiliation ICAP, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, New York, United States of America

Clemensia Nakabiito

Affiliation MU-JHU Research Collaboration, Kampala, Uganda

Robert Salata

Affiliation Department of Medicine, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, United States of America

Lydia Soto-Torres

Affiliation Division of AIDS, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, United States of America

Karen Patterson

Affiliation Department of Biostatistics, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, United States of America

Alexandra M. Minnis

Affiliations Women’s Global Health Imperative, RTI International, San Francisco, California, United States of America, School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley, California, United States of America

Sharavi Gandham

Affiliation SCHARP, Seattle, Washington, United States of America

Kailazarid Gomez

Affiliation FHI 360, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, United States of America

Barbra A. Richardson

Affiliation Department of Biostatistics, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, United States of America

Namandje N. Bumpus

Affiliation Department of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America

Competing Interests

CONRAD provided regulatory support for the tenofovir gel IND given their ongoing management of tenofvoir gel development. However, NIH held the IND for the tenofovir gel in this study, not CONRAD, not Gilead. CONRAD did not provide financial support. Gilead had no role in this study - neither the design, drug supply, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. MTN paid for the tenofovir gel. Finally, there are no restrictions to data from MTN-001 which is controlled by CONRAD or Gilead Sciences. This does not alter the authors’ adherence to all the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: CWH BAC VG JJ CN RS LST AMM KG BAR. Performed the experiments: CWH BAC VG CH JJ CN RS LST KP AMM SG KG BAR NNB. Analyzed the data: CWH KP AMM SG BAR NNB. Wrote the paper: CWH BAC VG CH JJ CN RS LST KP AMM SG KG BAR NNB.