Addressing an audience at WHO then at UNAIDS headquarters on 1 December, World AIDS Day, HIV discoverer and 2008 Nobel Prize winner for medicine, Prof. Françoise Barré-Sinoussi (Head of Retroviral Research Department, Pasteur Institute, Paris) summarized the challenges ahead in HIV research.

"We need to go back to basic research, and I here initiate a call for young researchers to join in what must be an international effort against HIV", she said. To arrive at an understanding of the way HIV affects the immune system, there is a need for researchers from different fields to examine the issue.