“I must admit that I never for a moment dreamt I would hear such news,” Barre-Sinoussi told French radio by telephone from Cambodia, after she and Luc Montagnier shared one half of the award, discovered the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS, one of the biggest scourges of modern times.
The French pair’s HIV discovery was “one prerequisite for the current understanding of the biology of the disease and its antiretroviral treatment,” the Nobel citation said.
Their work “led to development of methods to diagnose infected patients and to screen blood products, which has limited the spread of the pandemic,” it said.
Montagnier dedicated his award to AIDS sufferers and predicted results on a “therapeutic vaccine” for the pandemic within four years.
