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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.[1] He was born in Chabris.
[edit] History of the discovery of HIVIn 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.[2] 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, but renamed it human T-lymphotropic virus type III (HTLV-III).[3] 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. The two scientists continued to dispute each other's claims until 1987. It was not until President Mitterrand of France and President 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. 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 [4]. According to Maria Masucci, a member of the Nobel Assembly, “there was no doubt as to who made the fundamental discoveries” [5]. 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. [edit] See also
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