René Panthier

René Panthier (January 18, 1915 – July 10, 1970) was a French physician and microbiologist. He served as scientist for the Pasteur Institute for thirty two years. He was research assistant (1941), head of laboratory (1944), and head of service (1957) at the Pasteur Institute. He was appointed deputy director (1966), and director (1967) of the Application Center of the Pasteur Institute. In the years 1938-1944, he studied with Paul Giroud the adaptation of Rickettsia prowazekii, the agent responsible for typhus, to the rabbit inoculated by respiratory route. This research provided the basis for the Durand - Giroud vaccine[1][2].

René Panthier
Born(1915-01-18)January 18, 1915
Montloué, France
DiedJuly 10, 1970(1970-07-10) (aged 55)
Paris, France
CitizenshipFrench
Known forResearch in microbiology, fight against the Nazi occupation in France
Spouse(s)Paule Descola
Children4

During the influenza epidemic of 1948-1949, he isolated with Geneviève Cateigne and Claude Hannoun the first strains of the influenza virus in France[3][4]. In 1964, he isolated with Claude Hannoun, Jean Mouchet and Jean-Pierre Eouzan the first strains of the West Nile virus in France, in Camargue[5]. He also developed a method for titrating antiviral antibodies using a seroprotection test[6][7][8][9].

Biography

René Panthier was born in the north-eastern French province of Lorraine. He was four years old when his father, Irénée Raoul Panthier, died following gas poisoning during World War I. As ward of the state, René Panthier studied medicine at the Faculty of Medicine in Paris. He became Paris Hospital intern in 1934 and trained at the Pasteur Hospital under the supervision of a renowned infectious clinician, René Martin[10][11]. He completed a thesis on hemorrhagic fevers under the supervision of Paul Giroud. He defended his Medical Degree in September 1939[12], a few days after Britain and France declared war on Germany following Poland invasion.

World War II

In September 1939, Panthier was called and assigned to a military field hospital. He was released from service in August 1940 in Castres after the Germans invaded France. He resumed his research on typhus under the direction of Paul Giroud in the vaccine department of the Pasteur Institute in Paris. He participated in one of the first French movement of resistance fighters, the Armée des Volontaires (A.V.). Following the arrest on February 11, 1942 of Marie-Auguste Chabaud, research assistant in the leprosy laboratory of the Pasteur Institute and head of the AV group in the 15th district of Paris, he was sent quickly on a mission by Jacques Trefouël, director of the Pasteur Institute, first at the Pasteur Institute in Algiers (Algeria) and then at La Roche Beaulieu[13] in the remaining free part of France (Zone libre), to create production centers for typhus vaccine[14]. At that time, the Pasteur Institute faced a sensitive issue : the German authorities requisitioned serums and vaccines while typhus raged in French prison camps in Germany. Decision was made to produce typhus vaccine on a large scale using the Durand - Giroud process. The vaccine produced in the unoccupied territories was sent to the prison camps[15]. Upon his return to occupied Paris in May 1943, he participated in the subversive activities of the Wizard (Jean Millet/William Savy) network of the Special Operation Executive, and became an underground agent (P2) from March to September 1944[16]. Wizard network tasks led to the identification of a secret ammunition dump containing 2,000 V1 rockets ready to fire in the stone quarries at St-Leu-d'Esserent, near Paris. Bomber command stove it between June 27 and August 5, 1944[17]. He was entrusted in November 1944 the establishment of a medical service responsible for the reception of prisoners, deportees and refugees in Lille at the northern tip of France. Recalled at his request in the Far East Expeditionary Force, he volunteered to participate in the reduction of one of the last pockets of Third Reich resistance along the Atlantic coast of France, in Royan. He was injured on April 15, 1945 by a mortar shrapnel during military operation. He embarked as a lieutenant doctor on November 5, 1945 aboard the victory ship Kings Point Victory for Indochina where he was appointed chief medical officer of the Indochina-South military laboratory and head of the bacteriology laboratory of the Pasteur Institute in Saigon (currently Ho Chi Minh City). He was demobilized in Marseille on February 28, 1947, and returned to the Pasteur Institute in Paris.

Post-war scientific activities and leadership functions

He then entered the influenza laboratory directed by René Dujarric de la Rivière. At the latter's request, he tried to apply the method used by Paul Giroud and Paul Durand to the typhus bacteria for the influenza virus. This strategy revealed unsuccessful ; it did not replace the preparation of the influenza vaccine on eggs. He met Paule Descola who was preparing her M.D. thesis on polioviruses], in Jean Vieuchange's laboratory at the Pasteur Institute[18]. He married her in March 1948. Four children were born from this union: Marie-Lise, Gilles, Jean-Jacques and Jean-Noël. During the winter of 1948, he and his collaborators isolated the first strains of influenza virus in France.

He was appointed in July 1949 director of the Hellenic Pasteur Institute. The Second World War and the ensuing Greek Civil War left the Pasteur Institute in Athens in a sorry state. A the end of this mission he was appointed honorary director of the Hellenic Pasteur Institute. He returned to the Pasteur Institute in Paris in 1952 to work on the yellow fever virus. He set up research laboratories and the production of yellow fever vaccine according to the method of Max Theiler, Nobel Prize in medicine in 1951. He developed in particular a method of titration of yellow fever antibodies by a neutralization test. He also ensured an increasing production of the influenza vaccine.

In 1962 he joined the Pasteur Institute in Guinea as director. The situation of this Pasteur Institute in Kindia was therefore difficult because of the political tensions between France and Guinea, which had just gained independence. Upon his return to the Pasteur Institute in Paris, he extended his activity to other viruses transmitted by insects (arboviruses). He contributed several epidemiological and virological studies on viral infections in France and in Africa[19][20][21][22]. With his collaborators, he isolated in France strains of arboviruses pathogenic for humans, including West Nile virus (1964)[5][23][24][25][26].

In March 1964, the situation at the Pasteur Institute was worrying. A study commission for the reform of the Pasteur Institute, made of Elie Wollman, René Panthier and Bernard Virat was established. The study commission drafted a reorganization project which was implemented with the arrival of director Pierre Mercier. Panthier was appointed in 1966 as deputy director of the Pasteur Institute by director Pierre Mercier[27]. He died on July 10, 1970 at the Pasteur Hospital in Paris at 55 from cancer. His widow died in 2003 at 84.

Awards and recognition

Officer of the Légion d'Honneur, Croix de Guerre 1939-1945, King's Commendation for Brave Conduct, Medal of honor for Epidemics, Knight of Public Health, and Vermeil Medal by the Académie Nationale de Médecine

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References
  1. Giroud, P; Panthier, R (1941). "Il est possible d'adapter directement au poumon de Souris un typhus historique isolé et conservé sur Cobaye". C R Hebd Seances Acad Sci (in French). 210: 462-464.
  2. Durand, P; Giroud, P (1941). "Le lapin inoculé par voie respiratoire avec les rickettsies du typhus historique. Pouvoir antigène des suspensions". Ann Inst Pasteur (Paris). 68 (6): 425-437.
  3. Panthier, R; Cateigne, G; Hannoun, C (1949). "Isolement d'une souche de virus grippal; réaction du jeune singe à l'inoculation nasale de ce virus". C R Hebd Seances Acad Sci (in French). 228: 347-448. PMID 18117802.
  4. Panthier, R; Cateigne, G; Hannoun, C (1949). "Adaptation à l'oeuf et à la souris d'un virus récemment isolé d'un cas de grippe". C. R. Soc. Biol. (in French). 143: 72-74.
  5. Hannoun, C; Panthier, R; Mouchet, J; Ezouan, JP (1964). "Isolement en France du virus West Nile à partir de malades et du vecteur Culex modestus Ficalbi" [Isolation in France of the West Nile virus from patients and from the vector Culex modestus Ficalbi]. C R Hebd Seances Acad Sci (in French). 259: 4170–4172. PMID 14260659.
  6. Panthier, R (1956). "Recherche d'une méthode précise de titrage des anticorps par test de séroprotection" [Research on a precise method of antibody titration by seroprotection test]. Bull Soc Pathol Exot Filiales (in French). 49 (4): 759–763. PMID 13396532.
  7. Panthier, R; Carteaud, AJP; Husson, RA (1957). "Recherche d'une méthode précise de titrage des anticorps par test de séroprotection. II. Etude de la variation systématique du rapport virus-anticorps" [Research on a precise method of antibody titration by seroprotection test. II. Study of systematic variation of virus antibody relation]. Bull Soc Pathol Exot Filiales (in French). 50 (2): 282–295. PMID 13460689.
  8. Panthier, R; Carteaud, JP (1958). "Recherche d'une méthode précise de titrage des anticorps par test de séroprotection. III. Variation du temps de contact et de la température du mélange virus-sérum" [Research on a precise method of titration of antibodies by the seroprophylaxis test. III. Variations in the time of contact & the temperature of the virus-serum mixture in vitro before inoculation]. Bull Soc Pathol Exot Filiales (in French). 51 (2): 159–162. PMID 13561024.
  9. Panthier, R (1958). "Recherche d'une méthode précise de titrage des anticorps par test de séroprotection. Résultats complémentaires et discussion". Bull Soc Pathol Exot Filiales (in French). 51 (2): 183–197. PMID 13561031.
  10. Decourt, J; Martin, R; Hérault; Panthier, R (1939). "Méningite à méningocoques compliquée de septicémie à méningocoques, guérison de la méningite par une dose faible de sulfamide, nécessité de prescrire de fortes doses de sulfamide pour guérir la septicémie". Arch. de Médecine des enfants (in French). 42 (6): 367–370.
  11. Martin, R; Panthier, R; Nouaille; Hamond, Mlle (1940). "Discussion sur l'intérêt des injections de sulfamide par voie rachidienne dans le traitement des méningites purulentes". La Presse Médicale (in French). 10-11: 101–103.
  12. Panthier R. Notions actuelles sur les anticorps des fièvres exanthématiques. Thèse de Doctorat d'Etat de Médecine, Paris 1939, 1 vol, 34 pp
  13. Lamy, M (2002). "Une épopée pastorienne: l'annexe de la Roche Beaulieu de 1941 à 1975". Bulletin de l'association des anciens élèves de l'Institut Pasteur (in French). 173: 181–186.
  14. Chevassus-au-Louis, N (2007). "La résistance à l'Institut Pasteur (1940-1944), une confrontation de la mémoire pastorienne aux sources archivistiques" (PDF). Bulletin de l'association des anciens élèves de l'Institut Pasteur (in French). 192: 118–127.
  15. Allen, Artur (2015). The fantastic laboratory of Dr. Weigl: how two brave scientists battled typhus and sabotaged the nazis. New York: W.W.Norton § Company. pp. 168-169. ISBN 0393351041.
  16. Historical Defence Service ("Service Historique de la Défense" or "SHD"), administrative files of resistance fighters. Archives centre of Ministry of Defence and its armed forces, Fort de Vincennes, reference: GR16P 456515.
  17. SOE in France: An account of the work of the British Special Operations. Foot MRD. H.M.S.O., 1966, page 370
  18. Descola, P Etude expérimentale de la poliomyélite sur la rongeur. Thèse de Doctorat d'Etat en Médecine, Paris 1949, Peuronnet et Cie éditeurs
  19. Berdonneau, P; Serié, Ch; Panthier, R; Hannoun, C; Pappaioannou, S Ca; Georgieff, P (1965). "Sur l'épidémie de fièvre jaune de l'année 1959 en Ethiopie (frontière soudano-éthiopienne)". Bull Soc Pathol Exot Filiales (in French). 54: 276–283.
  20. Panthier, R; Hannoun, C; de Looze, L (1965). "Recherche d'anticorps (virus amaril et autres arbovirus) dans des sérums prélevés en Ethiope de 1954 à 1961" [Detection of antibodies (amaril virus and other arboviruses) in sera taken in ethiopia from 1954 to 1961]. Ann Inst Pasteur (Paris) (in French). 109: 204–227. PMID 14340584.
  21. Andral, L; Brès, P; Sérié, C; Casals, J; Panthier, R (1968). "Etudes sur la fièvre jaune en Ethiopie. 3. Etude sérologique et virologique de la faune sylvatique" [Studies on yellow fever in Ethiopia. 3. Serological and virological studies of the woodland fauna]. Bull World Health Organ (in French). 38: 855–861. PMC 2554526. PMID 5303661.
  22. Sérié, C; Casals, J; Panthier, R; Brès, P; Williams, MC (1968). "Etudes sur la fièvre jaune en Ethiopie. 2. Enquête sérologique sur la population" [Studies on yellow fever in Ethiopia. 2. Serological study of the human population]. Bull World Health Organ (in French). 38 (6): 843–854. PMC 2554526. PMID 5303660.
  23. Hannoun, C; Panthier, R; Corniou, B (1966). "Isolation of Tahyna virus in the South of France". Acta Virol. 10 (4): 362–364. PMID 4380517.
  24. Panthier, R (1968). "Epidémiologie du virus West Nile. Etude d'un foyer en Camargue. I. Introduction" [Epidemiology of the West Nile virus: study of an outbreak in Camargue. I. Introduction]. Ann Inst Pasteur (Paris) (in French). 114 (4): 518–520. PMID 5674587.
  25. Panthier, R; Hannoun, C; Beytout, D; Mouchet, J (1968). "Epidémiologie du virus West Nile. Etude d'un foyer en Camargue. III. Les maladies humaines". Ann Inst Pasteur (Paris) (in French). 115 (3): 435–445. PMID 5711530.
  26. Joubert, L; Oudar, J; Hannoun, C; Beytout, D; Corniou, JC; Guillon, JC; Panthier, R (1970). "Epidémiologie du virus West Nile. Etude d'un foyer en Camargue. IV.- La méningo-encéphalite du cheval" [Epidemiology of the West Nile virus: study of a focus in Camargue. IV. Meningo-encephalomyelitis of the horse]. Ann Inst Pasteur (Paris) (in French). 118 (2): 239–247. PMID 5461277.
  27. Institut Pasteur (1971). "René Panthier (1915-1970)". Ann. Inst. Pasteur (in French). 121 (3): 265–270.
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