 Bienvenue à la conversation, aujourd'hui on a l'honneur de parler avec le professeur François Barré Sunoussi, Nobel Laureate et qui est ici à l'AIDS 2014 conference. Bienvenue, terrific to have you in Melbourne. I guess just with respect to the fact that we have had the tragedy of M.H.Seminine, what impact do you think that will have on the conference? First of all I mean everybody is in shock. We are all thinking about our colleagues, our friends. We are thinking about all the other passengers as well. I mean it's a real tragedy. And of course it was very important for us, you know, thinking about our colleagues to move on and to show people that we will continue. We will continue the fight and this is the best tribute I think we can make. Perhaps you could tell us a little about your work and as a Nobel Laureate really how did that start, what were the key moments I guess of your discovery of the virus and in some ways how has that impacted on your life? Of course the first thing was the contact with the clinician in my country in France. William Rosenbaum was among the first clinician recognizing patients with this new emerging disease. He came at Pasteur Institute and called, you know, virologists at Pasteur, especially virologists working with his family of viruses, the retrovirus. And it's how we really started to work together with Willi with other clinicians as well and virologists from hospital. And we defined a strategy to try to isolate the virus from if it was a virus. And it's how Willi decided to ask a patient with Lafadenopathy, generalized Lafadenopathy whether he would accept Lafnode biopsies. Lafnode biopsies arrive at Pasteur beginning of January 1983 and two weeks later we had the first sign in the culture of a virus from that family. We had the surprise, the bad surprise to see that the cells were dying. At that time it was a blood bank at Pasteur, we crossed the street at cells from Madonna and again the virus started to replicate again. We were able to detect and then it was starting to characterize the virus showing that this virus was not similar to the only human retrovirus that was known at that time and still known today, HTLV family. Then to make the link between the virus and the disease itself by sero-épidémiologeical studies, by also trying to isolate the virus from other patients starting to make a diagnostic test both for the sero-épidémiologeical study but also for diagnostic. And starting to study the biology of the virus, what was the target cells what was the characteristic of the reverse transcriptase starting to characterize the genome of the virus. So everything when it started very rapidly. It was a very exciting time, also an intellectually very challenging. Very very busy challenging but also an exciting time because each time you know that we were as we do always in science you make an hypothesis, you ask a question you test that question, you define an approach to answer to that question and the answer is the one you were expecting. This is not so funny in science I must say but that period was wonderful. I must have been awfully, in some ways energizing and draining by virtue of the hours that you are working. But it was also a difficult period because of course it was scientifically speaking very exciting but as human being it was a lot of pressure because for me as I'm not a doctor, I'm a scientist it was the first time in my life really to be in direct contact with the people affected by this disease because they were coming, a pastor wanted to know better about the virus and so on and that was really dramatic. That hadn't been in your training. Can you tell us about that time in the US when a very sick patient actually asked to see you? That was in San Francisco. San Francisco was strongly affected in particular the homosexual population and I was invited to give a talk on the virus and at the end, the polevolverding clinician asked me whether I would accept to visit a patient in the emergency room and I said yes and of course it was dramatic because the guy was really dying and he was almost not able to speak I took my hands I still feel that moment he took my hands and says something that had some difficulty to understand and reading on his lips I found thank you So thank you I look at Paul at the clinician I ask the guy and he said I could recognize not for me for the oses and I think that's the moment in my life that I will remember forever And that in some ways stimulated your work for the novel that gives you some strength and say ok we have to move and to move on as fast as possible and I think the HIV AIDS community did quite well it was really a mobilization a solidarity in the 80s which is unprecedented And people say that in the first decade we have learned more about HIV than we have learned about many other diseases maybe in a century and even in the last three years we have learned more about it maybe than we have before that why do you think there is such dramatic increase and rapidity of scientific knowledge First of all because of this solidarity between the scientists the clinicians, the health professionals all together working also together with representatives of the patients I think this network and partnership we call us the HIV AIDS community I would never say that before I don't think in any other disease you have the same kind of thing you say the scientific community but for us we don't say the scientific community we say the HIV AIDS community that is everybody together fighting with the same objective the same goal to try to do the best for the affected population The other thing that seems apparent it was interesting that Willy Rosenberg would come to you with the clinicians coming to you to be living in an ivory tower that you are prepared obviously to communicate with clinicians work with clinicians and with the community at large has that sort of characterised your career that you like to work with other parts of the system Probably first of all I made all my career at the Pasteur Institute and this is as far as I was educated for me this is a mission of the Pasteur Institute the culture the spirit of the Pasteur the vision of the Pasteur was really to develop science was there to answer and to bring benefit to mankind everywhere in the world how we Pasteur started to make Pasteur Institute in different parts of the world so I was myself educated according to the Pasteur spirit but I did not I must confess that I did not realise totally what that means until HIV came along came along and I mean in the spirit of that also I mean you famously wrote an open letter to Pope Benedict in 2009 why why did you do that and you think it is the part of the scientist's job to be advocating in that way I mean the scientists are certainly trying to do their best to make progress in science for the benefit of human being but when you see that when there are scientific evidences like it is still for the condom to have a person with a Pope but it could be anybody else I mean president of a country or whatsoever as we've heard other presidents say the same thing saying just before arriving in a country where you know it's very sensitive and the voice of someone like the Pope is very important saying that the condom you can you have to do something because this is not true we as a scientist we know that the condom are efficient so it's a reason why I decided with two other colleagues to wrote a letter to the Pope saying that we are sorry but we have maybe you are not aware but we can provide you all the data very solid showing that the condom are very very efficient so please it's a mistake we feel when you arrive in a country like a moon to make such statement so please could you say that the statement were not totally right because it's important for the life of individuals unfortunately it never ends it did have an important impact I think globally it had an impact not so far after his visit I was myself in Cameroon and it turned out that some colleagues and people really involved in HIV already in Cameroon said to me oh François wrote to the Pope because you know he probably he did not entirely make the right interpretation of what he wanted to say he did not really say that the condom were not efficient but that we have to consider fidelity blah blah I understood very well what the Pope said you have yourself your responsibility as health professional in your country to explain to the population that the condom are efficient unfortunately in Cameroon or in other country I've seen myself we all know that there are religious people that are making a wonderful job the reasons that make me furious by the way because I know those religious people that are distributing condom making education of the population to try to prevent HIV infection it was very hard they made a wonderful job and they have their boss arriving in the country and destroying in few minutes everything I mean this is not acceptable and you've been a very strong proponent despite the as well as the major progress of making in terms of treatment you remain a strong advocate for prevention for prevention for everything which is for the benefit of the population prevention, treatment care I think it's just a question of respect of life life is the most beautiful thing in the world and it should be the things that we should respect the most with that today you've been a major symposium towards a cure for HIV what's been the major news to come out of the symposium to tell you the truth I cannot answer because I'm so busy that I've not been able myself to attend the symposium I will know during the next few days because my colleague will tell me but unfortunately as I said the closing it's frustrating to be part of the organization and not be able to really hear what is going on during the symposium I know however that it has been some presentation regarding new drugs trying to reactivate cells that carry the virus in patients that are on treatment the reason why we cannot stop the treatment of course it's promising but it's still preliminary as we've done for a number of AIDS conferences that's right but that's science I mean it's how we progress it's important to present the data anyway and because also we have to think about combining this approach to others I know that it has been also more data presented regarding the vaccine candidate using a cytomical virus as a vector of HIV antigens showing that this vaccine candidate is very efficient in reducing the size of the reservoir in the monkey model associated now to antiretroviral treatment showing that if we treat very early on associated with vaccines then we can reduce more and more the size of the reservoir so I mean this kind of information are critical to progress of cure research the data also on broadly neutralizing antibody are very promising and that might be an approach for the future to associate to other cure strategies so it's progressing well maybe on behalf of all of us at the conversation can I thank you very much for the time we've spent with this and just to wish you well in your important role in this AIDS conference thank you very much indeed thank you very much