Françoise Barré-Sinoussi

Françoise Barré-Sinoussi is a French virologist who co-discovered HIV and shared the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Luc Montagnier: French virologist who co-discovered HIV and shared the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. He led the Pasteur Institute team in which Barré-Sinoussi identified the virus.
AIDS: A disease caused by advanced HIV infection that severely damages immune function. Unexplained immune deficiency in patients prompted the search that led to HIV.
Retrovirus: A virus that copies its RNA genome into DNA using the enzyme reverse transcriptase. HIV belongs to this viral family, whose replication strategy shaped the laboratory search.
HIV vaccine research: Research seeking vaccines that prevent HIV infection or control it after exposure. Barré-Sinoussi supported vaccine research while acknowledging the challenge of HIV variability.
Willy Rozenbaum: French physician who helped identify the early AIDS cases that prompted the search for their cause. He brought the clinical samples that connected the laboratory investigation to AIDS patients.
Institut Pasteur: A French nonprofit research institute founded in 1887, known for work in biology and medicine. Barré-Sinoussi and Montagnier conducted their landmark HIV research there.
Reverse transcriptase: An enzyme that synthesizes DNA from an RNA template. Detecting its activity in patient samples provided evidence for a retrovirus.
Antiretroviral therapy: Treatment using drugs that suppress HIV replication and preserve immune function. The virus's identification enabled targeted drug development and transformed HIV care.
Robert Gallo: American biomedical researcher whose laboratory independently isolated and characterized HIV in the early 1980s. His competing research helped establish HIV's identification and generated a dispute over priority.
Lymphadenopathy-associated virus: An early name for the retrovirus isolated from patients with AIDS-related lymphadenopathy, later recognized as HIV. The 1983 report described this isolate from a patient whose symptoms preceded AIDS.

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