Nobel Prize for Medicine awarded for the discovery of HIV and HPV
Half of this year’s Nobel Prize has been awarded to Professor Herald zur Hausen for his discovery that the human papilloma virus (HPV) was responsible for causing cervical cancer.
The other half has been awarded to and Professor Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Professor Luc Montagnier for their discovery that the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) was the cause of AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome).
While the prizes have been unanimously welcomed as richly deserved, the HIV part of the award has caused some controversy for overlooking the claims of a third scientist, Professor Robert Gallo, who played a pivotal role in the discovery of the virus.
Prof. Gallo identified HIV independently of Prof. Montagnier and Prof. Barré-Sinoussi although published his work a year after his French rivals.
Such was the rivalry over whose work deserved priority that a compromise that shared credit was brokered in 1987 by the French and American presidents at the time, Ronald Regan and Jacques Chirac.
HPV and cervical cancer
HPV is the most common sexually transmitted agent in the world, afflicting between 50 and 80 per cent of the population. It can be detected in 99.7 per cent of women with histologically confirmed cervical cancer which affect more than 500,000 women a year.
Against the prevailing view during the 1970s, Prof. zur Hausen suggested that HPV played a part in the cervical cancer. He postulated that if the tumour cells contained an oncogenic virus, they should harbour viral DNA integrated into their genomes.
The HPV genes promoting cell proliferation should therefore be detectable by specifically searching tumour cells for such viral DNA.
After pursuing the idea for over 10 years he found novel HPV-DNA in cervix cancer biopsies and discovered the tumourigenic HPV16 in 1983.
He later found HPV to be a heterogeneous family of viruses, only some of which cause cancer.
In 1984, he cloned both HPV16 and HPV18 from cervical cancer patients and these viruses were consistently found in over 70 per cent of cervical cancer biopsies throughout the world.
This work has enabled vaccines such as Merck & Co.’s Gardasil to be developed that protect against infection from the high risk strains HPV16 and HPV18.
HIV and AIDS
The first reports in 1981 of a new immunodeficiency syndrome left researchers with a hunt to find the cause.
Prof. Barré-Sinoussi and Prof. Montagnier isolated and cultured cells from patients with swollen lymph nodes characteristic of the early stages of AIDS.
They detected retroviral enzyme reverse transcriptase activity in the cultures as well as finding retroviral particles budding from the infected cells.
Soon after the discovery of the virus, several groups contributed to the definitive demonstration of HIV as the cause of AIDS.
Since then the disease has reached pandemic proportions and while there are anti-retroviral therapies that increase the life expectancies of those infected with HIV, there is still no cure.
Prof. Barré-Sinoussi and Prof. Montagnier work has enabled important details about the virus’s replication cycle and led to the development of methods to diagnose infected patients and to screen blood products, which has limited the spread of the pandemic.
When asked by Adam Smith, editor-in-chief of Nobelprize.org whether he remembered the day that he first saw reverse transcriptase activity on cultured cells from patients and if he had any idea at the time the size of the epidemic that he might be looking at, Prof. Montagnier replied: “When I realised that the virus could be the cause of AIDS and was present not only in gay men in France and the United States, and haemophiliacs, but also in African nations – so this was in September 1983 – I realised it could be big.”
”In the beginning… I was actually working on a possible viral cause of breast cancer; I'm still interested in cancer virus so I appreciate that the Nobel Committee also has awarded the Prize to Harald zur Hausen who has worked for a long time on this.”
