The magazine of the european research area European Commission Copenhagen, a missed chance?

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24 research

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eu No. 63 | APRIL 2010

Given these failures, my curiosity was roused 

by reports of ‘minor surgery’ (some dating back 

to the 19

th

 century) of lesions caused by geni-

tal warts, which we associated with another 

infectious agent, then still poorly understood, 

the human papillovirus or HPV. Very few of us 

were then engaged in this path of research. In 

1974, at a virology conference in Florida, my 

presentation on these genital warts, challeng-

ing the simplex herpes avenue of research, 

received a very cool reception…

Our group – I was then in charge of the 

University of Freiburg Institute of Virology – 

established a close collaboration with the 

group working under French researcher Gérard 

Orth. He shared the same intuition and was 

studying the hereditary aspect of HPV. Our two 

groups met several times to share and discuss 

results. It was a rich experience of cooperative 

competition. 

The Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2008 turned the spotlight 

on three European pioneers who have contributed 

decisively to combating two major infectious scourges. 

They are French scientists Luc Montagnier and Francoise 

Barre-Sinoussi, who discovered the HIV viruses responsible 

for AIDS, and German virologist Harald zur Hausen, 

who identified human papillomaviruses (HPV) as the 

cause of cervical cancer. We interviewed the man who 

helped create the first vaccines against this cancer.