Researcher

Françoise Barré-Sinoussi

Profile

Françoise Barré-Sinoussi is a French virologist at the Institut Pasteur in Paris who shared the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Luc Montagnier for the discovery of HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) as the causative agent of AIDS. Working in Montagnier's laboratory at the Institut Pasteur in 1983, she identified a new retrovirus from a patient with swollen lymph nodes, which was later confirmed to be the cause of the AIDS epidemic. Her meticulous characterization of the virus—demonstrating its retroviral nature, identifying its tropism for CD4+ T cells, and publishing the initial isolation—was the essential first step toward developing HIV tests, antiretroviral drugs, and eventually strategies for vaccine development. Barré-Sinoussi has remained a lifelong advocate for HIV/AIDS research and for equitable access to antiretroviral therapy in developing countries. The global HIV therapeutics market—antiretroviral therapy keeping tens of millions of patients alive—rests on the discovery she co-made. Her continued work on HIV-2, natural immunity, and reservoir elimination is relevant to pharmaceutical efforts to develop a cure for HIV infection.

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