Discovery of HIV (1983): Identifying the Virus That Causes AIDS

The discovery of HIV, the human immunodeficiency virus, identified the cause of AIDS, a new and deadly disease that had alarmed doctors since 1981. In May 1983 researchers at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, led in the laboratory by Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier, published the first isolation of the virus. Their work, followed by a bitter scientific and diplomatic dispute with the American researcher Robert Gallo, made blood tests and later life-saving treatments possible.

Background: a mysterious new disease

On 5 June 1981 the US Centers for Disease Control reported five cases of a rare form of pneumonia, caused by Pneumocystis, in previously healthy young gay men in Los Angeles. Similar reports of unusual infections and a rare cancer, Kaposi’s sarcoma, quickly followed from New York and San Francisco. Patients’ immune systems were collapsing, and many died.

In 1982 the condition was named acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). Cases were found among people who injected drugs, people with haemophilia who received blood products, transfusion recipients and in parts of central Africa. The pattern suggested an infectious agent passed through blood and sexual contact, and some scientists suspected a retrovirus, a type of virus that copies its genetic material into the DNA of the cells it infects.

The Pasteur Institute discovery

In Paris, the clinician Willy Rozenbaum and colleagues were treating patients with AIDS and with swollen lymph nodes, an early sign of the illness. In January 1983 a lymph node biopsy from one such patient was sent to the Pasteur Institute’s viral oncology unit, headed by Luc Montagnier.

Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, working with the virologist Jean-Claude Chermann, cultured cells from the sample and looked for reverse transcriptase, an enzyme that is the signature of retroviruses. Within weeks they detected its activity. They noticed that the infected cells, a kind of white blood cell called T-lymphocytes, were dying, which matched the loss of these cells in AIDS patients. Electron microscope images showed new virus particles.

The team published their findings in the journal Science on 20 May 1983. The virus was soon named lymphadenopathy-associated virus (LAV). The paper was cautious: it reported a new retrovirus from a patient at risk of AIDS, but its role in causing the disease remained to be proven.

Gallo and the competing claims

Robert Gallo of the US National Cancer Institute was already a leading retrovirus researcher who had discovered the first human retrovirus, HTLV-1, in 1980. In the same issue of Science his group published work suggesting that a relative of HTLV might be linked to AIDS.

On 23 April 1984 the US Secretary of Health and Human Services, Margaret Heckler, announced that Gallo’s laboratory had found the probable cause of AIDS, a virus called HTLV-III, and had developed a blood test. In May 1984 Gallo’s group published four papers in Science showing that they could grow the virus in large quantities in a cell line and that it was found in many AIDS patients. In San Francisco, Jay Levy’s group isolated a similar virus, which it called ARV.

Genetic analysis soon showed that LAV and HTLV-III were nearly identical, far more alike than separate isolates from different patients should be. Investigations in the early 1990s concluded that the virus Gallo’s laboratory had studied came from a Pasteur sample sent to it in 1983, most likely through contamination of cultures. Gallo acknowledged the origin of the virus, while maintaining that his laboratory’s work on growing it and proving it caused AIDS was independent and essential.

The dispute had money at stake as well as prestige, because both countries had patented blood tests. On 31 March 1987 President Ronald Reagan and French Prime Minister Jacques Chirac announced an agreement to share credit and royalties.

Naming and early consequences

In 1986 an international committee recommended the name human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) to end the rivalry between LAV and HTLV-III. The same year, the Pasteur group and colleagues described a second virus from West African patients, now called HIV-2.

Identifying the virus had immediate practical effects. The first commercial HIV blood test was licensed in the United States in March 1985, allowing blood supplies to be screened. The first antiviral drug, AZT (zidovudine), was approved in 1987. From 1996, combinations of drugs, known as highly active antiretroviral therapy, turned HIV infection from an almost certain death sentence into a manageable chronic condition for those with access to treatment.

The 2008 Nobel Prize

In October 2008 the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was divided between Barré-Sinoussi and Montagnier, for their discovery of HIV, and the German scientist Harald zur Hausen, for showing that human papilloma viruses cause cervical cancer. Gallo was not included, which some scientists, including Montagnier himself, publicly regretted.

Key people

Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, born in 1947, carried out the experiments that first detected the virus. She went on to lead research on HIV for decades, worked closely with scientists in Africa and Asia, and served as president of the International AIDS Society from 2012 to 2014.

Luc Montagnier (1932–2022) headed the Pasteur unit and directed the project. In later life he promoted several ideas that were widely rejected by other scientists. Jean-Claude Chermann, a retrovirus specialist, was a co-author of the 1983 paper, and Willy Rozenbaum, the clinician who supplied the crucial sample, was among the first French doctors to recognise and treat AIDS.

Robert Gallo, who had also helped to discover interleukin-2, a molecule that made it possible to grow T-cells in the laboratory, continued research on HIV and in 1996 co-founded the Institute of Human Virology in Baltimore.

By the numbers

Timeline

• 1981, 5 June: The CDC reports the first cases of what would be called AIDS.
• 1983, January: A lymph node sample reaches the Pasteur Institute, where a new retrovirus is soon detected.
• 1983, 20 May: Barré-Sinoussi, Chermann, Montagnier and colleagues publish the isolation of LAV in Science.
• 1984, 23 April: The US government announces Gallo’s HTLV-III as the probable cause of AIDS.
• 1985, March: The first commercial HIV blood test is licensed in the United States.
• 1986: The name HIV is adopted, and HIV-2 is described.
• 1987, 31 March: Reagan and Chirac announce a Franco-American settlement on credit and royalties.
• 2008, 6 October: Barré-Sinoussi and Montagnier are named Nobel laureates.

Legacy

The discovery of HIV allowed scientists to trace the virus’s origins: genetic studies indicate that it crossed into humans from chimpanzees in central Africa in the early 20th century. It also gave activists, such as those of ACT UP, a clear target in demanding faster access to tests and drugs. Like the identification of other pathogens, from those behind past pandemics to the virus of COVID-19, it showed how quickly modern molecular biology could name a new threat.

Why it matters

Finding the virus that causes AIDS turned a mysterious syndrome into a defined infectious disease that could be tested for, prevented and treated. It saved countless lives through safer blood supplies and antiretroviral drugs, and the controversy over credit remains one of the best-known disputes in modern science.