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Aaaarthuuur here!
Journalism intern, 27 years old, getting ready to meet some PhD students…
…people who are going to change my life!
The Fortress
Albert,
I really don’t think I’m up to this, meeting Ferdinand today.
Meeting him at the Pasteur Institute,
the Mecca of research,
does not reassure me at all.
My last interviews weren’t the biggest disasters in the history of journalism,
so, maybe I have a chance after all.
Still, I wish I could just go unnoticed.
See you soon. Your friend, Arthur.
I’m Ferdinand Roesch.
I work at the Pasteur Institute, where I’m doing my PhD. I’m in the third year of my doctorate.
I work on the AIDS virus and how it replicates in the cells of the immune system,
and also how it’s detected by the immune system.
In college, I had classes in virology that fascinated me.
I decided then that I had to work on viruses, and on AIDS in particular.
Imagine that the human body is like a fortress, and the virus will try to penetrate it and multiply inside.
But there are some defenses, some detection systems, which work pretty well.
We try to understand exactly which elements of the human body and the immune system detect the virus…
how they detect it, and what kind of response they produce.
As you know, unfortunately, the AIDS virus kills many people, so these detection systems must not work all that well.
Maybe if we understand why detection of the virus doesn’t work very well, we’ll be able to improve it.
There are two main types of immune response.
One is adaptive immunity, based on antibodies, vaccines, that sort of thing.
The goal here is to create antibodies effective against all these types of virus at the same time.
That’s very difficult because these viruses are not identical.
Imagine a vaccine that is effective against all the viruses, except the brown one.
That one will be able to keep multiplying in the human body, and will generate more new viruses.
What we study is not this very specific response.
Instead, we study innate immunity, the first line of defense of the human body.
This one doesn’t have all those details about the virus.
It will just detect that there is a foreign body, a virus, something that is not normal in the human body.
This will activate the immune system, causing inflammation, and the first reaction that will then lead to all the others.
Arthur: What state of mind do you need to do a PhD, like you’re doing?
It takes a lot of work.
You have to repeat everything you do several times for it to be convincing,
and look at every element using different methods.
It also demands a lot of intellectual rigor.
You can’t overinterpret your results.
Sometimes it’s tempting: you have your idea, your hypothesis, you want to show it’s true…
but you have to work without any preconceived ideas.
I’d like to go to New York, work in a lab, probably on ***.
After that, my goal would be to come back to France and apply for a permanent position as a researcher.
Maybe at the Pasteur Institute, or with the CNRS or Inserm. I’m not sure yet.
Ferdinand.
A serious chap.
Very involved in his work, and aware that he is part of a whole.
He serves a noble cause, knowing that recognition may never come.
Still, he prefers to stay in the public sphere, for the freedom of thought and action it brings him.
These encounters are too short.
I feel an unexpected curiosity growing inside me.
Why aren’t these young researchers talked about more?
Or if they are, what for?
...But if they’re not, then why not?!
And me, for goodness' sake…
where am I going??
Written and directed by Paul Garcia In the role of Arthur: Dimitri Pougnet The researcher: Ferdinand Roesch