French virologist Francoise Barre Sinoussi has announced her retirement from active research. Thirty years ago the researcher proved the existence of HIV and that it was the cause of AIDS.
Professor Barre Sinoussi and her colleagues were awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine for their research in 1998.
Speaking to Reuters Professor Barre Sinoussi said scientists wouldn’t stop until they found a cure for HIV.
The professor said the next step in the battle against HIV is getting a treatment plan that puts people into remission.
“I am personally convinced that remission…is achievable. When? I don’t know. But it is feasible,” she told Reuters at her laboratory at Paris’s Pasteur Institute.
“We have ‘proof of concept’. We have…the famous Visconti patients, treated very early on. Now it is more than 10 years since they stopped their treatment and they are still doing very well, most of them.”
The Visconti patients are a group of people who began taking HIV medication soon after becoming HIV positive. They stayed on the medication for three years, more than a decade later most of the cohort have an undetectable HIV load.
Professor Barre Sinoussi said the next generation of scientists would continue her work.
OIP Staff
