crème de la crème

Jai Ganesh · 2024-12-25 22:02:55

2113) Françoise Barré-Sinoussi

Gist:

Life

Françoise Barré-Sinoussi has always loved nature and spent her school vacations observing animals and plants in the parks of her home town of Paris, France. According to Barré-Sinoussi herself, it was by accident that she eventually ended up working at the prestigious Institut Pasteur. She comes from a humble background and was forced to choose the shortest and cheapest education available. Barré-Sinoussi began working at Paris' Institut Pasteur as a volunteer and received her PhD in 1975. Her work with HIV has often been carried out on site in developing countries.

Work

Retroviruses are viruses whose genomes consist of RNA and whose genes can be incorporated into host cells' DNA. In 1983, Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Luc Montaigner discovered a retrovirus in patients with swollen lymph glands that attacked lymphocytes–a kind of blood cell that is very important to the body's immune system. The retrovirus, later named Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), proved to be the cause of the immunodeficiency disease AIDS. This discovery has been crucial in radically improving treatment methods for AIDS sufferers.

Summary

Françoise Barré-Sinoussi (born July 30, 1947, Paris, France) is a French virologist who was a corecipient, with Luc Montagnier and Harald zur Hausen, of the 2008 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. She and Montagnier shared half the prize for their work in identifying the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the cause of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS).

Barré-Sinoussi earned a Ph.D. (1975) at the Pasteur Institute in Garches, France, and did postdoctoral work in the United States at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. In 1975 she joined the Pasteur Institute in Paris, and in 1996 she became head of the Retrovirus Biology Unit (later called Regulation of Retroviral Infections Unit) there. From 2012 to 2014 Barré-Sinoussi was president of the International AIDS Society.

When Montagnier led efforts at the Pasteur Institute in 1982 to determine a cause for AIDS, Barré-Sinoussi was a member of his team. Through dissection of an infected patient’s lymph node, they determined that AIDS was caused by a retrovirus, which came to be known as HIV. Their work led to the development of new antiviral drugs and diagnostic methods.

Details

Françoise Barré-Sinoussi (born 30 July 1947) is a French virologist and Director of the Regulation of Retroviral Infections Division (French: Unité de Régulation des Infections Rétrovirales) and Professor at the Institut Pasteur in Paris. Born in Paris, Barré-Sinoussi performed some of the fundamental work in the identification of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) as the cause of AIDS. In 2008, Barré-Sinoussi was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, together with her former mentor, Luc Montagnier, for their discovery of HIV. She mandatorily retired from active research on 31 August 2015, and fully retired by some time in 2017.

Early life

Barré-Sinoussi was interested in science from a very young age. During her vacations as a child, she would spend hours analyzing insects and animals, comparing their behaviors and trying to understand why some run faster than others for example. Soon after, Barré-Sinoussi realized she was very talented in the sciences compared to her humanity courses. She expressed interest to her parents that she would like to attend university to study science or become a researcher. Barré-Sinoussi admitted that she was more interested in becoming a doctor but at the time she was under the false impression that studying medicine was both more expensive and lengthier than a career in science. After two years studying at the university, Barré-Sinoussi attempted to find part-time work in a laboratory to ensure that she had made the right career choice. After nearly a year of searching for laboratory work, she was finally accepted by the Pasteur Institute. Her part-time work at the Pasteur Institute quickly became full-time. She began to only attend university to take the exams and had to rely on her friends' class notes because she was not regularly attending class. However, Barré-Sinoussi was actually scoring higher on her exams than before because she finally had the motivation because she had realized a career in science was what she wanted to do.

Academic career

Barré-Sinoussi joined the Pasteur Institute in Paris in the early 1970s. She received her PhD in 1974 and interned at the U.S. National Institutes of Health before returning to the Pasteur Institute in Montagnier's unit.

During the early AIDS epidemic in 1981-1984, the viral cause of the outbreak had not yet been identified. Working with Luc Montagnier, Jean-Claude Chermann and others at the institute, Barré-Sinoussi isolated and grew a retrovirus from a biopsied swollen lymph node of a patient at risk for AIDS. This virus would later be known as HIV-1, the causative agent behind the outbreak. This discovery allowed for the development of diagnostic tests to aid in controlling the spread of the virus, for informing policy on the treatment of people living with AIDS, and for many important advancements in the science of HIV/AIDS that ultimately saved countless lives.

Barré-Sinoussi started her own laboratory at the Pasteur Institute in 1988. Among Barré-Sinoussi's many recent research contributions are studies of various aspects of the adaptive immune response to viral infection, the role of innate immune defenses of the host in controlling HIV/AIDS, factors involved in mother-to-child transmission of HIV, and characteristics that allow a small percentage of HIV-positive individuals, known as elite suppressors or controllers, to limit HIV replication without antiretroviral drugs. She has co-authored over 240 scientific publications, has participated in over 250 international conferences, and has trained many young researchers.

Barré-Sinoussi has actively contributed to several scientific societies and committees at the Institut Pasteur as well as to other AIDS organizations, such as the National Agency for AIDS Research in France. She has also been implicated at an international level, notably as a consultant to the WHO and the UNAIDS-HIV.

Since the 1980s, Barré-Sinoussi has initiated collaborations with developing countries and has managed multidisciplinary networks with dedication. In 2016, she was interviewed by the Sunday Observer and reflected on how Jamaica is dealing with HIV. She constantly works on establishing permanent links between basic research and clinical research with the aim of achieving concrete improvements in the areas of prevention, clinical care, and treatment.

Professor Barré-Sinoussi believes that scientists have made steady progress given the development of antiretroviral treatment which UNAIDS states is being accessed by 17 million of the people globally who are living with AIDS, but finding a cure, or cures, will take time, and a continued investment in research. As the co-chair of the 21st International AIDS Society (IAS), she said the search for curative strategy of HIV is a goal of paramount importance and a priority for the future of HIV research. Moreover, even though research to achieve such cures is in a formative stage, significant advances are being made towards a HIV cure.

In 2009, she wrote an open letter to Pope Benedict XVI in protest over his statements that condoms are at best ineffective in the AIDS crisis.

In July 2012 Barré-Sinoussi became President of the International AIDS Society.

Path to HIV discovery

When Francoise Barré-Sinoussi began working on retroviruses at the Pasteur Institute there were large programs in the United States working on the association between cancer and retroviruses, so she decided to study the link between retroviruses and leukemia in mice. After the new disease emerged (not yet named AIDS), a group of French physicians came to the Pasteur Institute to ask the rather simple question: is this new disease caused by a retrovirus? After much discussion with other colleagues, including Luc Montagnier, they concluded the agent causing this new disease may be a retrovirus but it was not HTLV, the only known retrovirus at the time, because of differing defining characteristics. In the early 1980s, Barré-Sinoussi was already familiar with the technique of detecting reverse transcriptase activity. If reverse transcriptase activity is present, it confirms that the virus is a retrovirus. In December 1982, heavy research began and clinical observations suggested that the disease attacked immune cells because of the significant CD4 cell depletion. However, the depletion of the CD4 lymphocytes made it very difficult to isolate the virus in patients with the disease later known as AIDS. Because of the difficulty isolating an infected cell from a patient with late disease progression, Barré-Sinoussi and her colleagues decided to use a lymph node biopsy from a patient with generalized lymphadenopathy. Generalized lymphadenopathy was a common symptom of patients in the early stages of disease progression. In the second week of checking the biopsied cell cultures for reverse transcriptase activity, enzymatic activity was detected and increased for a short time until the reverse transcriptase activity decreased dramatically after the T-lymphocytes in the culture began to die. Barré-Sinoussi and her colleagues decided to add lymphocytes from a blood donor in order to save the culture and it proved successful after the virus transmitted to the newly added lymphocytes from the blood donor and significant reverse transcriptase activity was again detected. At this point, the virus was named LAV for Lymphadenopathy Associated Virus, which would later be renamed to HIV, the human immunodeficiency virus. 1983 marked the beginning of Barré-Sinoussi's career researching HIV that continued until her retirement.

Leadership

Francoise Barré-Sinoussi remained at the Pasteur Institute and was appointed head of the Biology of Retroviruses Unit in 1992. The Biology of Retroviruses Unit was reconfirmed in 2005 and renamed the Regulation of Retrovirial Infections Unit. Currently, the unit is working on vaccine research against HIV and the correlates of protection against AIDS for immunotherapy. Barré-Sinoussi's career has also included integration with resource-limited countries, such as Vietnam and Central African Republic. Her experiences working in developing nations with the World Health Organization were truly eye-opening experiences for her and motivated her to continue to collaborate scientifically with various countries through Africa and Asia. This collaboration has promoted many exchanges and workshops between young scientists from resource-limited countries and researches in Paris.
Francoise Barré-Sinoussi was elected to the International AIDS Society (IAS) Governing Council in 2006 and served as the president of the IAS from 2012 to 2016. Barré-Sinoussi worked on the Conference Advisory Committee for the 9th IAS Conference on HIV Science, which took place in July 2017 and is currently serving as co-chair of the IAS, working toward an HIV cure initiative.

Awards

Barré-Sinoussi shared the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Luc Montagnier for their co-discovery of HIV, and with Harald zur Hausen, who discovered the viral cause of cervical cancer that led to the development.

Jai Ganesh · Yesterday 16:34:55

2114) Luc Montagnier

Gist:

Work

Retroviruses are viruses whose genomes consist of RNA and whose genes can be incorporated into host cells' DNA. In 1983, Luc Montaigner and Françoise Barré-Sinoussi discovered a retrovirus in patients with swollen lymph glands that attacked lymphocytes–a kind of blood cell that is very important to the body's immune system. The retrovirus, later named Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), proved to be the cause of the immunodeficiency disease AIDS. This discovery has been crucial in radically improving treatment methods for AIDS sufferers.

Summary

Luc Montagnier (born August 18, 1932, Chabris, France—died February 8, 2022, Neuilly-sur-Seine) was a French research scientist who received, with Harald zur Hausen and Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, the 2008 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. Montagnier and Barré-Sinoussi shared half the prize for their work in identifying the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the cause of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS).

Montagnier was educated at the Universities of Poitiers and Paris, earning degrees in science (1953) and medicine (1960). He began his career as a research scientist in 1955 and joined the Pasteur Institute in Paris in 1972. In 1993 he established the World Foundation for AIDS Research and Prevention, and he later accepted an endowed chair at Queens College, New York City, where he headed (1998–2001) the Center for Molecular and Cellular Biology. He returned to the Pasteur Institute in 2001 as professor emeritus. Montagnier also served as president of the Administrative Council of the European Federation for AIDS Research.

In the early 1980s Montagnier, working at the Pasteur Institute with a team that included Barré-Sinoussi, identified the retrovirus that eventually became known as HIV. In the ensuing years there was much controversy over who first isolated the virus, Montagnier or American scientist Robert Gallo, and in 1987 the U.S. and French governments agreed to share credit for the discovery. Subsequently, however, Montagnier’s team was generally acknowledged as having first identified the virus.

Details

Luc Montagnier (18 August 1932 – 8 February 2022) was a French virologist and joint recipient, with Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Harald zur Hausen, of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). He worked as a researcher at the Pasteur Institute in Paris and as a full-time professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China.

In 2017, Montagnier was criticised by other academics for using his Nobel prize status to "spread dangerous health messages outside of his field of knowledge". During the COVID-19 pandemic, Montagnier promoted the conspiracy theory that SARS-CoV-2, the causative virus, was deliberately created and escaped from a laboratory. Such a claim has been rejected by other virologists.

Early life and education

Montagnier was born in Chabris in central France. Montagnier became interested in science as a teenager. He studied science at the University of Poitiers, France, and then became an assistant in the Faculty of Sciences at Sorbonne University, where he obtained a PhD.

Career

In 1960, Montagnier moved to Carshalton, UK as a postdoctoral fellow at the now defunct Virus Research Unit of the Medical Research Council (United Kingdom). In 1963, he moved to the Glasgow Institute of Virology. He developed a soft agar culture medium to culture viruses.

From 1965 until 1972 he was Laboratory Chief at the Institut Curie, then moved to the Institut Pasteur working on the effects of interferon on viruses.

Discovery of HIV

In 1982, math Rozenbaum, a clinician at the Hôpital Bichat hospital in Paris, asked Montagnier for assistance in establishing the cause of a mysterious new syndrome, AIDS. Rozenbaum had suggested at scientific meetings that the cause of the disease might be a retrovirus. Montagnier and members of his group at the Pasteur Institute, notably including Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Jean-Claude Chermann, had extensive experience with retroviruses. Montagnier and his team examined samples taken from Rozenbaum's AIDS patients in 1983 and found the virus that would later become known as HIV in a lymph node biopsy. They named it "lymphadenopathy-associated virus", or LAV, since it was not then clear that it was the cause of AIDS, and published their findings in the journal Science on 20 May 1983.

A team led by Robert Gallo of the United States published similar findings in the same issue of Science and later confirmed the discovery of the virus and presented evidence that it caused AIDS. Gallo called the virus "human T-lymphotropic virus type III" (HTLV-III) because of perceived similarities with HTLV-I and -II, which had previously been discovered in his lab. Because of the timing of the discoveries, whether Montagnier's or Gallo's group was first to isolate HIV was for many years the subject of an acrimonious dispute. HIV isolates usually have a high degree of variability because the virus mutates rapidly. In comparison, the first two-human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) isolates, Lai/LAV (formerly LAV, isolated at the Pasteur Institute) and Lai/IIIB (formerly HTLV-IIIB, isolated from a pooled culture at the Laboratory of Tumor Cell Biology (LTCB) of the National Cancer Institute) were strikingly similar in sequence, suggesting that the two isolates were in fact the same, and likely from the same source.

In November 1990, the Office of Scientific Integrity at the National Institutes of Health attempted to clear up the matter by commissioning a group at Roche to analyze archival samples established at the Pasteur Institute and the Laboratory of Tumor Cell Biology (LTCB) of the National Cancer Institute between 1983 and 1985. The group, led by American epidemiologist Sheng-Yung Chang, examined archival specimens and concluded in Nature in 1993 that the American sample in fact originated from the French lab.

Chang determined that the French group's LAV was a virus from one patient that had contaminated a culture from another. On request, Montagnier's group had sent a sample of this culture to Gallo, not knowing it contained two viruses. It then contaminated the pooled culture on which Gallo was working.

Before the 1993 publication of Chang's results, Gallo's lab was accused and initially found guilty of "minor misconduct" by the Office of Scientific Integrity in 1991, and then by the newly created Office of Research Integrity in 1992 for the misappropriation of a sample of HIV produced at the Pasteur Institute. The subsequent publication in 1993 of Chang's investigation cleared Gallo's lab of the charges, although his reputatihad already been tainted by the accusations.

Today it is agreed that Montagnier's group first isolated HIV, but Gallo's group is credited with discovering that the virus causes AIDS and with generating much of the science that made the discovery possible, including a technique previously developed by Gallo's lab for growing T cells in the laboratory. When Montagnier's group first published their discovery, they said HIV's role in causing AIDS "remains to be determined."

The question of whether the true discoverers of the virus were French or American was more than a matter of prestige. A US government patent for the AIDS test, filed by the United States Department of Health and Human Services and based on what was claimed to be Gallo's identification of the virus, was at stake. In 1987, both governments attempted to end the dispute by arranging to split the prestige of the discovery and the proceeds from the patent 50–50, naming Montagnier and Gallo co-discoverers. The two scientists continued to dispute each other's claims until 1987.

It was not until French President François Mitterrand and American President Ronald Reagan met in person that the major issues were ironed out. The scientists finally agreed to share credit for the discovery of HIV, and in 1986, both the French and the US names (LAV and HTLV-III) were dropped in favor of the new term human immunodeficiency virus (virus de l'immunodéficience humaine, abbreviated HIV or VIH) (Coffin, 1986). They concluded that the origin of the HIV-1 Lai/IIIB isolate discovered by Gallo was the same as that discovered by Montagnier (but not known by Montagnier to cause AIDS). This compromise allowed Montagnier and Gallo to end their feud and collaborate with each other again, writing a chronology that appeared in Nature that year.

On 29 November 2002 issue of Science, Gallo and Montagnier published a series of articles, one of which was co-written by both scientists, in which they acknowledged the pivotal roles that each had played in the discovery of HIV.

Personal life and death

In 1961, Montagnier married Dorothea Ackerman, and they had three children. He died in Neuilly-sur-Seine on 8 February 2022, at the age of 89.

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#1651 2024-12-25 22:02:55

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