The long-running debate between US researcher Robert Gallo and French scientist Luc Montaginer over the HIV discovery came to an end earlier this week after the Nobel committee decided to honour Montagnier and his colleague Francoise Barre-Sinoussi for their HIV research. Bertil Fredholm, head of the Nobel Committee at the Karolinska Institute, told reporters that the groundbreaking research “had been made in France.”

The team of French researchers isolated and cultured lymph node cells in the early stage of acquired immune deficiency or AIDS and detected activity of the retroviral enzyme reverse transcriptase, a direct proof of retrovirus replication. Isolated virus infected and killed lymphocytes from both diseased and healthy donors, and reacted with antibodies from infected patients. They identified the virus they called LAV in lymph nodes from early and late stages of the infection. By 1984, Barré-Sinoussi and Montagnier had obtained several isolates of the novel human retrovirus, which they identified as a lentivirus, from sexually infected individuals, haemophiliacs, mother to infant transmissions and transfused patients.

The researchers announced in 1983 that they had discovered the virus which became known as HIV in blood cells from AIDS patients. In 1984, Gallo and his team said they found a virus called HTLV-3 and presented evidence that it causes AIDS. The virus called HTLV-3 was later shown to be nearly identical to the LAV virus. In 1986, Gallo and Montagnier shared a prestigious Lasker award, given in the United States. The French scientist was cited for discovering the virus and Gallo for determining that it caused AIDS.

The dispute over who had been the first to isolate the virus continued in scientific journals’ pages, meetings and in courtrooms. In 1987, then-U.S President Ronald Reagan and Prime Minister Jacques Chirac of France agreed that the two teams should share proceeds from any AIDS tests and the researchers publicly agreed to be considered co-discoverers of the AIDS virus.

Montagnier, 76, is now director of the World Foundation for AIDS Research and Prevention in Paris. Francoise Barre-Sinoussi continues his work at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, where the discovery of the human papilloma virus was made.

The French team shares the 2008 Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology with a German scientist, Harald zur Hausen, who identified the cause of cervical cancer. The German scientist received the prize for making the link between the human papilloma virus and cervical cancer. Professor Hausen discovered the new, tumourigenic HPV 16 type in 1983. The following year, he showed that a second strain, HPV-18, was in some tomors. He cloned the two viruses and made them available to other researchers. The two HPV types are found in about 70 percent of cervical cancers. According to the World Health Organization, every year there are 500 thousand new cases of cervical cancers. The work of Prof zur Hausen of the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg has led to the discovery of vaccines that protect young women against cervical cancer by preventing infection with HPV.