AIDS, HPV research wins Nobel

Two French researchers who discovered the human AIDS virus and a German scientist who showed that human papilloma virus causes cervical cancer were awarded the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on Monday.

The decision effectively ends the long-running dispute between France's Luc Montagnier and the United States' Dr. Robert Gallo, concluding that Montagnier and his colleague Francoise Barre-Sinoussi were the rightful discoverers of the virus, which is now carried by more than 33 million people worldwide.

Montagnier and Gallo conducted a bitter public dispute over discovery of HIV in the 1980s, with each claiming that the other had misused viral samples.

At stake was not only scientific primacy for the discovery of the virus but also millions of dollars in licensing fees from tests used to detect HIV infections in patients.

The dispute was so contentious that then-President Reagan and French Prime Minister Jacques Chirac eventually stepped in, in 1987, negotiating an agreement that divided the royalties equally.

In 1991, however, further studies showed that the virus isolated by Gallo was identical to Montagnier's but different from the viruses carried by the patients Gallo claimed to have isolated it from. Three years later, the U.S. government conceded that the French should receive the lion's share of royalties from the AIDS test, affirming Montagnier's role.

The Nobel citation did not mention Gallo's role, noting only that "after the discovery of the virus, several groups contributed to the definitive demonstration of HIV as the cause" of AIDS.

Gallo said Monday that he was "disappointed" by the foundation's rejection of his role.

Montagnier said he wished that Gallo had shared in the award. "It is certain that he deserved this as much as us two," he told The Associated Press.

The other half of the $1.4 million Nobel Prize was awarded to Dr. Harold zur Hausen of the University of Dusseldorf for discovery of the viruses that cause genital warts and are responsible for an estimated 500,000 cases of cervical cancer each year.

"I'm not prepared for this," Zur Hausen, 72, told The Associated Press. "We're drinking a little glass of bubbly right now."

Montagnier, 76, is now director of the World Foundation for AIDS Research and Prevention in Paris; Barre-Sinoussi, 61, is still at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, where the discovery was initially made.

Barre-Sinoussi received word of the prize in Cambodia, where she is doing research, while Montagnier was in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, delivering a lecture.

Their work was honored, the Nobel citation said, because never before have "science and medicine been so quick to discover, identify the origin, and provide treatment for a new disease entity."

Zur Hausen's work was far less controversial, although his proposal that human papilloma virus, commonly called HPV, causes cervical cancer was initially disparaged by other researchers.

But he reasoned that if the virus played such a role, its genes would be incorporated into those of tumor cells, and he spent more than a decade looking for evidence. That search was complicated by the fact that only segments of the virus made it into the tumor DNA.

In 1984 he found that one strain, called HPV-16, was in some tumors. The following year, he showed that a second strain, HPV-18, was in others. He then cloned the two viruses and made them available to other researchers.

Those two strains are now known to cause an estimated 70 percent of all cases of cervical cancer, and vaccines against them, Gardasil and Cervarix, are now beginning to play a crucial role in preventing the disease.

About 15 strains of the virus are now known to cause cervical cancer. The viruses have been associated with penile, oral and other cancers as well.

The prizes will be presented Dec. 10 in Stockholm, Sweden.