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Luc Montagnier
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Luc Montagnier (born August 18, 1932) is a French virologist and joint recipient with Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Harald zur Hausen of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. He was born in Chabris.
982, he was asked for assistance with establishing the possible underlying retroviral cause of a mysterious new syndrome, AIDS, by Willy Rozenbaum, a clinician at the Hôpital Bichat hospital in Paris. Rozenbaum's role was vital, as he had been openly speculating at scientific meetings that the cause of the disease might be a retrovirus, and it was from a lymph node biopsy taken from one of Rozenbaum's patients that the breakthrough was to come.
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Luc Montagnier (born August 18, 1932) is a French virologist and joint recipient with Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Harald zur Hausen of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. He was born in Chabris.
History of the discovery of HIV
In 1982, he was asked for assistance with establishing the possible underlying retroviral cause of a mysterious new syndrome, AIDS, by Willy Rozenbaum, a clinician at the Hôpital Bichat hospital in Paris. Rozenbaum's role was vital, as he had been openly speculating at scientific meetings that the cause of the disease might be a retrovirus, and it was from a lymph node biopsy taken from one of Rozenbaum's patients that the breakthrough was to come. Jean-Claude Chermann played a vital role in the discovery as well.
By 1983, this group of scientists and doctors, headed by Montagnier, had discovered the causative virus, but did not know whether it caused AIDS. It was named lymphadenopathy-associated virus, or LAV. A year later, a team led by Robert Gallo of the United States confirmed the discovery of the virus and that it caused AIDS, and renamed it human T-lymphotropic virus type III (HTLV-III).
Montagnier's research was conducted at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. Whether his or Gallo's group was first to isolate HIV was for many years the subject of an acrimonious dispute. The controversy arose, in part, from the striking similarity between 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, reported to be isolated from a pooled culture at the Laboratory of Tumor Cell Biology (LTCB) of the National Cancer Institute), and the high degree of variability found among subsequent HIV-1 isolates. The controversy included accusations that Gallo improperly used a sample of HIV produced at the Pasteur Institute.
Since then, there has been considerable and sometimes acrimonious controversy over the priority for the discovery of HIV, including accusations (of which Gallo was later cleared) that Gallo's lab misappropriated a sample of HIV produced at the Institut Pasteur. In November 1990, the United States Office of Research Integrity at the National Institutes of Health commissioned 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 Sheng-Yung Chang, examined archival specimens and concluded in Nature in 1993 that Gallo's virus had come from Montagnier's 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.
Today it is agreed that Montagnier's group first isolated HIV, but Gallo's group is credited with demonstrating that the virus causes AIDS and 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 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 President François Mitterrand of France and President Ronald Reagan of the USA met that the major issues were ironed out. The scientific protagonists 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 Robert Gallo was the same as that discovered by Montagnier (but not known by Montagnier to cause AIDS). The compromise allowed Montagnier and Gallo to end their feud and collaborate with each other again for a chronology that appeared in Nature that year.
The Chicago Tribune published an investigative report by reporter John Crewdson in 1990 which questioned whether Gallo's laboratory had taken the virus from Montagnier, which led to National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Congressional investigations that ultimately cleared Gallo's group from any wrongdoing. In 1994, when further investigations revealed that there was no evidence that Gallo had invented the AIDS test and that the Institut Pasteur had applied for a patent for its own test months before Gallo, the NIH agreed to award a greater share of the patent royalties to the Institut Pasteur.
In the November 29, 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.
Awards and honors
However, in 2008, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Montagnier for the discovery of HIV, while Robert Gallo was conspicuously omitted. Montagnier shared it with his colleague Francoise Barre-Sinoussi from the Institut Pasteur for their work on the discovery of HIV. Harald zur Hausen also shared the Prize for his discovery that human papilloma viruses lead to cervical cancer, but Gallo was left out. Gallo said that it was "a disappointment" that he was not named a co-recipient. Montagnier said he was "surprised" Gallo was not recognized by the Nobel Committee: "It was important to prove that HIV was the cause of AIDS, and Gallo had a very important role in that. I'm very sorry for Robert Gallo." According to Maria Masucci, a member of the Nobel Assembly, “there was no doubt as to who made the fundamental discoveries.”
Montagnier is the co-founder of the World Foundation for AIDS Research and Prevention and co-directs the Program for International Viral Collaboration. He is President of the Houston-based World Foundation for Medical Research and Prevention. He has received more than 20 major awards, including the Commandeur de la Légion d'Honneur, the Lasker Award (1986), the Gairdner Award (1987), King Faisal Foundation International Prize (1993) (known as the Arab Nobel Prize), and the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (2008). The latter was awarded to him for the discovery of HIV.
See also
External links
- . Official position of the Pasteur Institute.
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- Official website of the World Foundation for Medical Research and Prevention
- Official website of Professor Luc Montagnier
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