HIV discoverer speaks out
VAncouver — She’s the woman who codiscovered HIV in 1983, and won a nobel Prize for her work. But next month, French scientist Francoise Barre-sinoussi will retire from her lab.
She spoke with CNN at last week’s International Aids Society conference, in Vancouver, about activism, the future of HIV and why there’s still no cure — as well as answering questions submitted by readers on Twitter. know, taxi drivers they like to speak, they say “what are you working on?” and after a while I say “I’m working on Aids” and they say “oh! You’re working on this disease that is affecting those gay people . . . you better work on other diseases like cancer or any other disease that’s affecting us!” (An appalled expression upon her face). So that means a lot to me.
even in my own country, in France . . . I was strongly affected by all the discussion around gay marriage in my country. I thought that after so many years we had made progress in terms of recognition of any population and I was really upset when I saw so much conflict regarding the legislation. Fortunately, it’s over and the legislation has been accepted. But still, not everybody is accepting those populations. That makes me really mad. really mad. treatment, a cure; we will be able to develop very rapidly a vaccine and more than 30 years later we still do not have a cure, we still do not have a vaccine.
At that time we did not understand the complexity of the interaction between the virus and the body. It’s really over the years that we started to understand all the complexities, not only of the virus but of this interaction, of the response of the host (patient) to the infection, the role of genetics, the role of immunology. Science has made wonderful progress but we are far from understanding everything.
even though we do not have a vaccine, I think we have learned a lot from the negative results as well . . . it’s not a failure. We are learning from negative data as much as we learn from positive data and I think vaccine research is typical of that. In the last six — seven years we are starting to see a lot of progress in the field of HIV vaccine.
I think the field of vaccinology in general is moving and maybe I am too optimistic, but I like to think because of HIV the field of vaccinology globally is moving, not only for HIV.
But it is difficult to say today, because we do not have a cure. I am not sure, by the way, we will have a cure. I used to say to develop a cure for HIV is an impossible mission.
I’m not going to say it’s not exciting because the people responsible for that work originate from my lab! So I cannot be objective. But no . . . it’s interesting data and we are learning from these patients . . . It’s true the studies on post-treatment controllers, we are learning which kind of response the therapeutic strategies for the future should use.
For me, it’s something very critical to make progress in science.
A cure for me is almost an impossible mission because the reservoir of cells is not only in the blood. How to eliminate all the cells which are reservoirs is why I say it’s an impossible mission. They are everywhere — in the gut, in the brain, in all the lymphoid tissue.
even if you have a very efficient strategy, how you can make sure that there’s not one or two cells still there and if one is there the virus will reappear again? That’s why I say it’s an impossible mission.
But you never know.
That’s right, in my country it’s mandatory to retire. I already got three additional years. I will officially retire at the end of August. That means first of all my lab will close on 31 August, so I will not have any research activity myself. However, I will probably continue some activities of course at the Pasteur Institute . . . and I will continue to be involved in international activity for the Pasteur Institute.
My agenda is almost full until 2017! I’m part of different committees, boards, scientific councils and I will continue activity for the IAS (International Aids Society), especially for HIV cure.
These are excerpts from the full interview with Francoise Barre-Sinoussi for Vital Signs