Research on AIDS virus and cancer wins Nobel Medicine Prize

STOCKHOLM (AFP) - French and German scientists credited with the discovery of the viruses behind AIDS and cervical cancer won Monday the Nobel Medicine Prize, the first of the prestigious awards to be announced this year.

France’s Francoise Barre-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier, who shared one half of the award, discovered the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS by destroying immune cells, one of the biggest scourges of modern times.

Harald zur Hausen of Germany went against current dogma and claimed that human papilloma virus (HPV) causes cervical cancer, the second most common cancer among women, the jury said.

The French pair’s HIV discovery was “one prerequisite for the current understanding of the biology of the disease and its antiretroviral treatment,” the Nobel citation said.

Their work “led to development of methods to diagnose infected patients and to screen blood products, which has limited the spread of the pandemic,” it said.

“The combination of prevention and treatment has substantially decreased spread of the disease and dramatically increased life expectancy among treated patients.”

AIDS -- acquired immune deficiency syndrome -- first came to public notice in 1981, when US doctors noted an unusual cluster of deaths among young homosexuals in California and New York.

It has since killed at least 25 million people, and 33 million others are living with the disease or harbouring HIV.