Group for AIDS Research (GRS)

Last updated on 17 December 2025

In brief

Established at the Pasteur Institute of Paris in 2002 and financed by the ANRS MIE since 2008, the Group for AIDS Research (Groupe de Réflexion SIDA, GRS) is an interdisciplinary group of researchers involved in HIV / AIDS research at the Pasteur Institute and other institutions such as ANRS MIE, CNRS and AP-HP. The GRS organizes meetings and seminars around an HIV / AIDS research topic. Since 2021, the meetings may also include topics related to emerging viruses.

Activities

  • The GRS aims at improving scientific communication on HIV / AIDS and at providing information on teams involved in HIV research on the campus. The GRS organizes a monthly meeting around HIV / AIDS thematics that concern fundamental research (retrovirology, pathogenesis) or applied research (vaccinology, antiretrovirals, immunotherapy, etc.).
  • To further collaborations with researchers of the international network of Pasteur Institutes involved in HIV / AIDS research, special meetings are organized by the GRS upon the visit of network researchers on the Parisian campus. Information on GRS meetings and HIV / AIDS research at the Pasteur Institutes are posted online to facilitate the involvement of all members of the network.
  • The GRS contributes to the identification of new common research themes to be developed at the Pasteur Institutes, and to the setup of collaborative programs such as PTR (Programmes transversaux de recherche) in the field of HIV / AIDS. The GRS organizes a scientific watch in the field of HIV / AIDS and promotes the discussion of current HIV / AIDS topics at its monthly meetings.

Always about generating discussions and ideas, the GRS was notably the birthplace of the idea behind Dynavir. This CNRS research group launched in 2014 and supported by the ANRS MIE focuses on the interactions between retroviruses and the genome of the host cell.

Co-Chairs


Nicoletta Casartelli
Virus and Immunity Unit, Pasteur Institute


Francesca di Nunzio
Advanced Molecular Virology U5 Unit, Pasteur Institute

Scientific organizing commitee

Guia Carrara (ANRS MIE)
Nicoletta Casartelli (Pasteur Institute)
Lisa Chakrabarti (Pasteur Institute)

Marc Lavigne (Pasteur Institute / CNRS)
Arnaud Moris (CNRS I2BC)
Francesca di Nunzio (Pasteur Institute)

Thanks to the GRS, we collectively continue to keep alive the debate on HIV/AIDS, on the fundamental research that remains to be done, and on other biological realities that have yet to be described.

Francesca di Nunzio, Co-chair of the GRS

Recent meeting topics

In 2025, the GRS broached the following subjects:

  • The deep profiling of HIV-1 RNAs – from splicing to epitranscriptomics – on June 17th, with Arnaud Moris (I2BC), Sarah Gallois-Montbrun (Inserm / Cochin Institute / Paris-Cité University), Olivier Namy (I2BC) and Etienne Decroly (AFMB).
  • New insights into the mechanisms of HIV-1 transcription and latency, on September 23rd, with Marc Lavigne (Pasteur Institute), Olivier Rohr (IBMC) and Stéphane Emiliani (Inserm / Cochin Institute / CNRS / Paris-Cité University).
  • And on November 25th, the topic of mucosal immunity to viruses, with Lisa Chakrabarti (Pasteur Institue) and Nathalie Dejucq-Rainsford (IRSET).

Plus, on November 3rd, the GRS hosted a presentation by professor Rahm Gummuluru, from the Boston University School of Medicine, on the innate immunity activation by HIV-1. Recorded at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, you can see the replay on ANRS MIE’s YouTube channel:

At a time when HIV/AIDS research is no longer always considered a priority, even though many regions of the world remain particularly vulnerable, the GRS provides a forum for active and committed debate in a historical context where the value of science is increasingly being called into question.

Nicoletta Casartelli, Co-chair of the GRS

For more information

To know more about past meeting topics and speakers, go directly to the Pasteur Institute’s page about GRS:

GRS at Pasteur Institute