Profile of Beatrice H. Hahn

PROFILE PROFILE Profile of Beatrice H. Hahn Jennifer Viegas Science Writer doctors in the region to use an X-ray ma- chine for diagnostics. “Watching him taught me what it means to be a physician,” says “ Beatrice Hahn, elected to the National Acad- Microbiology and the Institute of Medicine of Hahn. As an adolescent, Hahn liked to draw Discover blood and look at urine slides under the emy of Sciences in 2012, has a longstanding the National Academies. In 2002, ” interest in the origins and evolution of magazine named her one of “The 50 Most microscope. He let me do that, she adds. She human pathogens. She is recognized for Important Women in Science.” Hahn credits further enjoyed discussing cases with him at the dinner table. deciphering the primate origins of human “a lot of luck, good health, a talented team, In school, Hahn was curious to learn immunodeficiency viruses types 1 and 2 and a good husband” for her success. To- about biology. Her original education goals, (HIV-1 and HIV-2) and the malaria para- gether with her husband George Shaw, an- however, were directed toward becoming site Plasmodium falciparum. Hahn has also other international leader in human and a physician. She left her home to attend the developed noninvasive methods to study simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) re- the zoonotic potential of microbes that in- Technical University of Munich Medical search, Hahn continues to make impres- School, where she earned her doctorate in fect endangered primate species in the wild. sive contributions to this field of medical At present, Hahn is focused on developing medicine in 1982. science. Both Hahn and Shaw are now Hahn’s doctoral thesis (1) foreshadowed a protective human AIDS vaccine by dis- ’ based at the University of Pennsylvania s her later work but revealed some of her past secting the HIV-1 transmission process and Perelman School of Medicine. fl studying the biological properties of newly in uences. As a grade school student she transmitted founder viruses. Early Introduction to Medicine enjoyed herding and milking cows. Rural Over the years, Hahn has earned numer- Born in Munich, Germany, Hahn was in- Bavaria, where cows are a ubiquitous part ous honors, from receiving a National Insti- troduced to medical science by her father, of the landscape, also helped to shape her tutes of Health R37 Merit Award in 2008 to who worked as a primary care physician in thinking. Hahn wondered how bovine election to both the American Academy of rural Bavaria. Her father was among the first illnesses might affect humans, given the closeness of human interaction with cattle. The bovine leukemia virus, the subject of her thesis, is closely related to HTLV-1, a human tumor virus. Robert Gallo and the Discovery of HIV-1 While at the Technical University of Munich, a colleague introduced Hahn to virologist Robert Gallo, then a researcher at the Na- tional Cancer Institute in Bethesda, MD. Gallo’s sister had died at an early age from leukemia, a disease to which he dedicated much of his early research. Gallo was par- ticularly interested in tumor-causing retroviruses, which are single-stranded RNA viruses that insert DNA copies of their genome into their host cell to replicate. Bovine leukemia virus is one example of such a retrovirus. Hahn wished to work in Gallo’s laboratory, but Gallo could not offer her financial support. Hahn successfully applied for a fel- lowship from the German Science Founda- tion. On May 1, 1982, she arrived at the National Cancer Institute. “At the time,” she recalls, “doing basic biomedical research in Germany was not an attractive option.” Such opportunities then were far better in the United States. “Funding and This is a Profile of a recently elected member of the National Academy of Sciences to accompany the member’s Inaugural Article George Shaw and Beatrice Hahn. Image courtesy of Beatrice Hahn. 10.1073/pnas.1304288110. www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1305711110 PNAS Early Edition | 1of3 Downloaded by guest on September 29, 2021 science have since greatly improved in Germany,” she says, but she had decided to remain in the United States. The year before her arrival, clinical cases of the disease now known as AIDS surfaced in the United States. The initial cases were reported among gay men with no known cause of impaired immunity, and yet these individuals often showed symptoms of a rare form of pneumonia and skin cancer. A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Task Force was formed to monitor the outbreak. Gallo’s laboratory, of which Hahn was now a part, investigated the cause. George Shaw arrived at Gallo’s laboratory in 1983, and Hahn and Shaw’s first collaboration began. A colleague of the couple, Mikulas Popovic, succeeded in culturing and isolating the virus. Hahn and Shaw then cloned its genome. In 1984, Gallo and his collabo- rators published a series of four papers (2– Hahn observes a chimpanzee in Gombe National Park, Tanzania. Image courtesy of 5) in the journal Science demonstrating Brandon Keele. that the isolated retrovirus was the cause of AIDS. A French team led by virologist Luc Montagnier, who was then at the Pasteur been transmitted to humans on at least Around this time, Hahn published a paper Institute, also isolated the retrovirus from seven occasions.” in Science (8), of which the noted prima- a patient (6); Gallo is thus regarded as the As for how these transmissions occurred, tologist Jane Goodall was a coauthor. “Our codiscoverer of HIV-1. Hahn and her team wrote that among wild- work in Gombe with Jane Goodall was very “ AIDS as a Zoonosis living primates, biting and predation repre- instrumental because Gombe is the only sent the most likely means of cross-species place in the world where SIVcpz-infected In 1985, Hahn and Shaw were recruited to infection.” Hunting bushmeat “provides a wild chimpanzees tolerate the presence of initiate human retrovirus research efforts at plausible explanation for the transmission human observers,” Hahn says. Of an initial the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s of lentiviruses to humans.” The hypothesis 58 wild chimpanzees tested, one healthy Comprehensive Cancer Center. With perse- drew attention to the bushmeat trade and 23-y-old sexually active male from Gombe verance, they both rose up the ranks at the related factors, such as the effects of com- National Park, Tanzania, was positive for university. Over time, Hahn became a ten- mercial logging and the link between so- SIVcpz infection. The report demonstrated ured professor in the Departments of Medi- cioeconomic factors and disease. Now, the the feasibility of the noninvasive approach cine and Microbiology and then served as the challenge was to directly study SIVcpz in but left open important questions, such as: codirector of the Center for AIDS Research. wild chimpanzees using ethical means. Hahn What is the natural history of the infection? Hahn and Shaw have always enjoyed “good says, “Primates, and in particular apes, are chemistry,” as she says, both in and out of the dear to my heart.” Chimpanzee Reservoirs of HIV-1 laboratory, and they married in 1988. For over three years, Hahn and her team A summary of the pair’s studies on the Novel Research Tool tenaciously tracked the AIDS-like viruses that origin of AIDS was published in Science in Hahn credits two of her former students, afflict chimpanzees. In July 2006, a paper in January 2000 (7). As for nearly all of Hahn Mario Santiago and Brandon Keele, with Science (9) announced a significant discovery. and Shaw’s work, the report foreshadowed establishing then-novel noninvasive methods Hahn and Shaw’s team, in collaboration their later investigations. “Humans are not that allowed the team to diagnose and mo- with Paul Sharp, an evolutionary biologist the natural hosts of either HIV-1 or HIV-2,” lecularly characterize SIV infections in wild- at the University of Edinburgh, and Martine the team wrote. “Instead, these viruses have living chimpanzees, gorillas, sooty manga- Peeters, a virologist at the Institute of Re- enteredthehumanpopulationasaresultof beys, and other primates. Santiago established search and Development and the University zoonotic, or cross-species, transmission. We methods to amplify SIVcpz nucleic acids of Montpellier 1, wrote in the report: “The now know of at least 18 distinct primate from fecal RNA, and Keele began working findings presented here, together with prior lentiviruses that naturally infect different with RNAlater, a solution used to preserve studies, provide for the first time a clear African primates.” Lentiviruses are members fecal samples. Keele subsequently developed picture of the origin of HIV-1 and the seeds of a family of retroviruses characterized by a highly sensitive fecal-based antibody assay. of the AIDS pandemic.” a long incubation period. The researchers Collaborating primatologists would describe The discovery provided a crucial link in noted that two such simian immunodefi- themselves as being “glorified pooper scoop- the chain of evidence implicating SIVcpz in ciency viruses, SIVcpz from chimpanzees and ers,” but the effort was simple and ingenious. the origin of HIV-1 and AIDS. The report SIVsmm from sooty mangabeys, “are the The noninvasive diagnostic methods yielded also displayed the creative thinking of Hahn cause of acquired immunodeficiency syn- critical information without harming the en- and Shaw’s team. Their noninvasive techni- drome in humans. Together, they have dangered species. ques enabled the detection of antibodies and 2of3 | www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1305711110 Viegas Downloaded by guest on September 29, 2021 PROFILE nucleic acids in fecal samples collected from noninvasive techniques that had uncovered for successful viral replication within a new the forest floor.

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