Research Profile - Seeing it through to the end

Dr. Julio Montaner

Dr. Julio Montaner wins the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Knowledge Translation Award

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Dr. Julio Montaner is hopeful that in his lifetime HIV/AIDS could be eliminated.

"It can be done. We have the technology and the expertise to do it. We just need the leadership and the political will," says Dr. Montaner, Director of the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS (BC-CfE).

Dr. Montaner, recipient of this year's Canadian Institutes of Health Research Knowledge Translation Award, came to Canada in 1981 as a young Argentinean medical doctor eager to pursue his passion for research. While completing his post-doctoral studies in Dr. James Hogg's lab at St. Paul's Hospital in Vancouver, he began to see a large number of young patients with a rare form of pneumonia coming in for treatment. It would soon become clear that these patients had a deadly new disease called AIDS.

Rather than just treating the side infections that affect HIV/AIDS patients, Dr. Montaner decided to attack the virus head-on. He began researching antiretroviral therapy, a treatment strategy that had shown some promise.

"Many of my colleagues were skeptical," says Dr. Montaner. "They felt that antiretroviral therapy was too narrow a field of research. But I thought back to my father, a doctor and health researcher in Argentina, and his dedication to tuberculosis research. I felt I could make a difference with antiretrovirals."

And make a difference he did. He was one of the first researchers to demonstrate that the use of a three-drug "cocktail" of antiretrovirals could significantly improve survival in HIV/AIDS patients. And in 2006, Dr. Montaner and his colleagues published groundbreaking data which suggested these medications not only help those who are already infected, they also help slow the spread of the virus.

Throughout his career, Dr. Montaner has worked to put health research knowledge to work. Through the BC-CfE and his position as president of the International AIDS Society, Dr. Montaner ensures that HIV/AIDS research results are shared directly with policy makers so that they can help the communities hardest hit by the disease.

"I believe that, as a researcher, your responsibility doesn't end when you publish your data," says Dr. Montaner. "That's when it begins."