Nobel-winning virologist co-discovered HIV
Soon after reports of a mysterious new disease began circulating in the early 1980s, describing predominantly gay patients with compromised immune systems and rare forms of cancer and pneumonia, Luc Montagnier began working to find the cause.
The French virologist was a senior researcher at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, where he directed a unit that focused on retroviruses, a group of insidious microbes that multiply by splicing their genetic material into a host cell’s genome. Like many of his colleagues, he suspected that one such virus was the culprit.
When he and others at Pasteur examined a sample in January 1983, studying a slice of swollen lymph node from a fashion designer who exhibited early signs of the disease, they were surprised to find what appeared to be an entirely new kind of retrovirus. It was unusually potent, lying hidden in white blood cells before flaring up, replicating and killing the cells that had enabled it to grow.
The lab of Montagnier, who was 89 when he died Tuesday at a hospital in the Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine, had discovered HIV, the drug-resistant virus that was later found to cause AIDS. The disease ballooned into a public health crisis as Montagnier and his team fought for recognition from the scientific community, which ignored and sometimes scorned their early research.
Ultimately, the work done by Montagnier and his colleagues paved the way for an HIV blood test, spurred the development of AIDS drugs and therapies, and earned him a share of the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine in 2008.
Much to Montagnier’s dismay, his findings also plunged him into a decade-long battle as he and an American team led by National Cancer Institute researcher Robert C. Gallo vied over who discovered what, and when.
The dispute was formally resolved only with help from President Ronald Reagan and French Prime Minister Jacques Chirac, with both sides claiming a share of the credit and the royalties from blood-test patents.
“Never before has science and medicine been so quick to discover, identify the origin and provide treatment for a new disease entity,” the Nobel committee said in 2008.
By the time of the announcement, more than 25 million people had died of AIDS-related illnesses, and an estimated 33 million more were living with HIV. By all accounts, the disease’s toll would have been far greater were it not for advances in virology spearheaded by Montagnier and Gallo.
In an autobiographical essay for the Nobel Prize, Montagnier recalled that he had been interested in medicine since he was a young man, when he watched his grandfather experience “terrible suffering” and eventually died of rectal cancer.
Montagnier studied science and medicine at the University of Poitiers, receiving a bachelor’s degree in 1953, and completed his medical studies in Paris, where he earned a doctorate at the Sorbonne in 1960.
He joined the Pasteur Institute in 1972 and was the founding director of the its viral oncology unit until 2000, when he became a professor emeritus. From 1974 to 1998 he was also director of research at the French National Center for Scientific Research, once of Europe’s largest scientific agencies.
He went on to establish biotechnology companies focused on developing a cure for AIDS, and in 1993 he co-founded the World Foundation for AIDS Research and Prevention, a UNESCO-affiliated organization based in Paris.
More recently, he opposed mandatory vaccinations in France and claimed that the coronavirus was man-made, created as part of developing a potential HIV vaccine. He cited a paper that had not yet been peer-reviewed and has since been retracted, according to the Associated Press.