When Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down over Ukraine Thursday, 108 of the 298 people killed in the crash were AIDS researchers heading to Melbourne, Australia for the 20th annual International AIDS Conference, The Australian reports – a tragedy that has not only saddened the entire medical research community, but may have also set back AIDS research by leaps and bounds.

“The loss of these researchers is going to have a significant impact on the HIV community,” says David Rosenthal, medical director of the Center for Young Adult, Adolescent and Pediatric HIV at the North Shore-LIJ Health System in New York.

Rosenthal says the conference the researchers were heading to focuses on AIDS research across the globe, "and is attended by some of the most influential people in the field." Much of the research scheduled to be presented is aimed at decreasing HIV transmission rates in Third World countries, he adds, and the death of the researchers will be felt for generations. “These people had huge impacts on increasing the availability of medicines and prevention methods,” he says. "We could potentially see a decreased ability to treat the people who need it most while we try to start up research again.”

Joep Lange​, an AIDS researcher from the University of Amsterdam who authored more than​ 350 articles on AIDS and is considered a leader in the field, is among the names early reports indicate died in the crash. “He’s made amazing strides in world health and conducted huge trials to decrease maternal transmission rates,” Rosenthal says. “The loss of him and his team has an enormous impact on current and future research.”

In a speech Friday about the MH17 crash, President Barack Obama offered his condolences to the families of all the researchers who were killed. “These were men and women who dedicated their own lives to saving the lives of others,” he said, “and they were taken from us in a senseless act of violence.”

Conference officials released a statement mourning the loss of the researchers, but said the conference will go on as scheduled. “In recognition of our colleagues' dedication to the fight against HIV/AIDS, the conference will go ahead as planned and will include opportunities to reflect and remember those we have lost,” the statement from the International AIDS Society said.

This isn’t the first time the conference has had to deal with a tragic, sudden loss of a researcher due to a plane crash. More than 25 years ago, researcher Irving Sigal,​ who helped develop early HIV drugs, died in the explosion of Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland. Just 10 years later, researchers Jonathan Mann, the head of the World Health Organization's global AIDS program, and his wife and fellow AIDS researcher Mary Lou Clements-Mann​ died when Swissair Flight 111 crashed near Nova Scotia.

Michael Para​, a professor of internal medicine, molecular virology, immunology and medical genetics at The Ohio State University’s Division of Infectious Diseases, whose research focuses on HIV therapeutics and vaccines, says going ahead with the conference is the right move. “It would be disrespectful to cancel the meeting,” he says. “Everyone who perished in the flight would have wanted it to continue.”