Le docteur Françoise Cathala Pagesy, née le 7 juillet 1921, est morte le 5 novembre 2012. Neurologue et virologue imaginative, passionnée et non conformiste, elle consacra sa vie à la recherche sur les infections virales latentes ou lentes et, notamment, les agents transmissibles non conventionnels ou prions. Chercheuse à l’Inserm, elle y participa dès l’origine de ces concepts, en collaboration avec, notamment, l’équipe de Carlton Gajdusek (le NINCDS – National Institute of Nervous Central System and Stroke – du NIH), qui montra la transmissibilité du kuru et de la maladie de Creutzfeldt-Jakob, et celles du Centre de recherches du service de santé des armées, à Percy-Clamart et du CEA, puis de groupes marseillais. Ainsi fut institué un vaste programme de recherches et de colloques où se réunissaient, au Val-de-Grâce à Paris, l’ensemble des chercheurs français et étrangers sur les « infections virales lentes ». S. Prusiner y présenta le concept – alors fort discuté et toujours en évolution – de prion. F. Cathala vécut les grandes crises sanitaires : hormone de croissance contaminée, encéphalopathie spongiforme bovine (« vache folle ») et nouvelle variante de la maladie de Creutzfeldt-Jakob au Royaume-Uni, puis en France, avant de prendre sa retraite de l’Inserm et de mourir paisiblement à Paris.

Doctor Françoise Cathala Pagesy, MD, MS, born on July 7, 1921 in Paris, passed away peacefully at home on November 5, 2012. Unconventional, passionate and enthusiastic neurologist and virologist, she devoted her life to research on latent and slow viral infections, specializing mainly on unconventional transmissible agents or prions. As a research member of Inserm (French Institute for Medical Research), she soon joined the team of Carlton Gajdusek (the NINCDS – National Institute of Nervous Central System and Stroke – of NIH), who first demonstrated the transmissibility of kuru and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease to monkeys. When she came back to Paris, where she was followed by one of NIH members, Paul Brown, she joined the Centre de Recherches du Service de Santé des Armées (Army Health Research Center), in Percy-Clamart, where she found the experimental design and the attentive help needed for her research, which appeared heretical to many French virologists, including some authorities. A large number of research programs were set up with numerous collaborations involving CEA (Center for Atomic Energy) and other institutions in Paris and Marseilles on epidemiology, results of tissue inoculation, electrophysiology and neuropathology of human and animal prions diseases, and resistance of the infectious agent. International symposia were set up, where met, in the Val-de-Grâce hospital in Paris, the research community on “slow viral diseases”. Stanley Prusiner introduced the concept – then badly accepted and still in evolution – of prion, a protein only infectious agent. Before retiring from Inserm, Françoise Cathala predicted and was involved in some of the huge sanitary crises in France. These were, first, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease from contaminated growth hormone extracted from cadavers, which led parents to instigate legal procedure – a quite unusual practice in France. The second was Mad cow disease in the United Kingdom then in France, followed by new variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob human epidemics, paradigmatic food safety crisis bringing together the poles of production (beef and meat-and-bone meal) and consumption, and leading to an unexpected social bang. Through Françoise Cathala exemplary life, the history of French, and more generally of worldwide prions diseases is dealt with.