Pierre Charneau is a French virologist and inventor and head of the Molecular Virology and Vaccinology Unit (VMV) at the Pasteur Institute and an acknowledged specialist of HIV, lentiviral gene transfer vectors and their medical applications. His discovery of the central DNA-flap structure in the HIV genome, and its role in viral entry into the nucleus of the infected cell, grounded the optimization of lentiviral vectors and paved the way to more than 20 years of development in gene therapy and vaccines based on this gene delivery technology. Charneau has published more than 100 research articles and holds 25 patents in the field of HIV and lentiviral vectors.