Press / Press kits
AIDS research - a priority for the Institut Pasteur
In 1983, a French team that brought together researchers from the Institut Pasteur and researchers and clinicians from the Paris Public Hospital Network isolated, for the first time, the virus responsible for AIDS, now known as HIV-1 (see “The discovery of the AIDS virus”).
This discovery, and the subsequent exemplary interaction between specialists from different and complementary disciplines – including clinicians, virologists, immunologists, molecular biologists and epidemiologists – with backgrounds in both fundamental research and clinical care, enabled very rapid progress to be made.
However, nearly twenty-five years later, AIDS is still an unacceptable menace that affects, in particular, the most under-privileged countries and populations: nearly 40 million people are now infected in the world, 150,000 of them being in France (see ”AIDS in terms of numbers”).
In this context, AIDS research constitutes one of the main objectives of the Institut Pasteur in Paris and the International Network of Instituts Pasteur based in the countries most affected by the epidemic.
In Paris, about fifteen teams are actively working on various avenues, covering the majority of current priority fields of research. This work is being conducted in the context of a close partnership with the French National Agency for AIDS Research (ANRS).
Research is particularly focused on the development of the infection, virus variability, HIV entry and multiplication mechanisms in human cells, virus transmission (including from mother to child) and its regulation, the physiopathology of the infection, human immune response to the virus, natural protection in humans and, of course, treatments and candidate vaccines.
________
May 2008
This discovery, and the subsequent exemplary interaction between specialists from different and complementary disciplines – including clinicians, virologists, immunologists, molecular biologists and epidemiologists – with backgrounds in both fundamental research and clinical care, enabled very rapid progress to be made.
However, nearly twenty-five years later, AIDS is still an unacceptable menace that affects, in particular, the most under-privileged countries and populations: nearly 40 million people are now infected in the world, 150,000 of them being in France (see ”AIDS in terms of numbers”).
In this context, AIDS research constitutes one of the main objectives of the Institut Pasteur in Paris and the International Network of Instituts Pasteur based in the countries most affected by the epidemic.
In Paris, about fifteen teams are actively working on various avenues, covering the majority of current priority fields of research. This work is being conducted in the context of a close partnership with the French National Agency for AIDS Research (ANRS).
Research is particularly focused on the development of the infection, virus variability, HIV entry and multiplication mechanisms in human cells, virus transmission (including from mother to child) and its regulation, the physiopathology of the infection, human immune response to the virus, natural protection in humans and, of course, treatments and candidate vaccines.
________
May 2008
