In May of 1992, Claflin University professor Dr. Omar Bagasra published an article in the New England Journal of Medicine presenting his then-controversial findings that larger numbers of human blood cells are infected with HIV than was believed at that time.

He caught the attention of Dr. Luc Montagnier who helped discover the human immunodeficiency virus. The two became professional and personal acquaintances.

“My association with Dr. Montagnier started in 1993 when he invited me to come to the Pasteur Institute in Paris and give a three-day workshop and show a new method that I have invented to his scientists,” Bagasra said. “This was a unique test that can detect a single copy of HIV in individual cells.”

On Monday, Montagnier won a share of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of HIV. Bagasra said he can’t imagine a more deserving person to receive the prestigious award.

“I think that no one deserves the Nobel Prize for the discovery of the AIDS virus more than Dr. Montagnier,” Dr. Bagasra said. “As many of us are aware, it was ready to be awarded in 1989 but a last-minute hitch caused the Nobel Committee to withhold the award. It is way overdue.”

Just two years after the first reports of cases of what we now know as AIDS, Montagnier and Francoise Barre-Sinoussi discovered the virus that later came to be known as human immunodeficiency virus.

An infective agent was suspected by many to cause the disease, and they decided to test whether it might be a so-called retrovirus. The gamble proved correct and their studies revealed retroviral activity in cells taken from a patient’s lymph nodes and demonstrated that virus from these cells could infect and kill white blood cells. Soon after the discovery of the virus, several groups contributed to the definitive demonstration of HIV as the cause of acquired human immunodeficiency syndrome.

“In 1983, Dr. Montagnier and his team figured out a way to grow HIV from the lymph node biopsies of AIDS patients,” Bagasra explained. “Because of this, they were able to grow the virus in T cell lines. This was a seminal discovery. It translated into identification of the virus as well as the development of an antibody-based test that can be used to screen HIV-infected individuals. It saved millions of lives because before that time, over 100,000 hemophiliacs had received HIV-infected blood products. The culture methods also led to the development of anti-HIV agents that are currently helping millions of HIV-1 infected people.”

In the late 1990s, Bagasra discovered a new kind of immunity that can block HIV replication inside the cells. He compiled all the anecdotal data on the new vaccine and invited Montagnier to write the forward for his book “HIV and Molecular Immunity.”

In it, he said Bagasra’s use of a technique called in situ polymerase chain reaction, “has the potential to bring many of the hazy issues of HIV retrovirology into focus.”

“Dr. Bagasra is not only a skillful, innovative laboratory researcher; he is also a discerning scholar who explores novel ideas, many of which he has discussed with me during scientific conferences,” Dr. Montagnier wrote.

Upon Montagnier’s retirement from the Pasteur Institute’s leadership, he joined Queen’s College in Flushing, N.Y., and invited Bagasra to join his teaching team where he periodically spoke about the new ways to prepare HIV vaccine.

“Since then, we are in touch by e-mails and I have visited his house in New York City to discuss with him many of my ideas and get his opinion,” Bagasra said. “This is a well-deserved award to Dr. Montagnier.”

Dr. Montagnier was born in France and is a professor emeritus and director of the World Foundation for AIDS Research and Prevention in Paris, France.

In addition to teaching biology, Bagasra is the director for the South Carolina Center for Biotechnology at Claflin University, where he continues his AIDS research. Bagasra also continues his exploration of novel ideas and presented a radical new theory in the fight to cure HIV at the 17th International Conference on AIDS in Mexico City in August.

Most HIV vaccines under development seek to stop the HIV virus from entering a human cell. In contrast, Dr. Bagasra presented a paper proposing the development of a vaccine that stops HIV after it’s already inside.

“It’s a new way of looking at vaccines,” he says.

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