Dr. Julio Montaner, OC, OBC, MD, DSc (hon), FRCPC, FCCP, FACP, FRCP, FRSC received his MD with Honours in 1979 at the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, before joining the University of British Columbia as a post-doctoral fellow in 1981. He completed a residency in Internal Medicine & Respiratory Medicine and became Chief Resident for the Department of Medicine in 1986/1987.

In 1987 Dr. Montaner joined the Faculty at St. Paul’s Hospital/University of British Columbia (UBC) as the Director of the AIDS Research Program and the Infectious Disease Clinic. He was appointed a National Health Research Scholar of Health Canada (NHRDP) for a period of 10 years starting in 1988 and was a founding co-Director of the Canadian HIV Trials Network. He has held the Endowed Chair on AIDS Research at SPH/UBC since 1996 and was appointed Professor of Medicine at UBC in 1997. Dr. Montaner joined the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS (BC-CfE) in 1992 as Director of Clinical Activities, and after an open, national search in 2005, was selected as the BC-CfE’s Director (revised in 2019 to Executive Director & Physician-in-Chief), a role in which he continues today. He was the President of the International AIDS Society from 2008 to 2010, the local co-chair of the 8th IAS Conference on HIV Pathogenesis, Treatment and Prevention in 2015 and was a Global Advisor on HIV Therapeutics to the Executive Director for the United Nations AIDS Programme (UNAIDS).

Dr. Montaner has authored over 1,000 scientific publications in peer-reviewed journals on HIV/AIDS and related conditions. He focused his research in the development of antiretroviral therapies and management strategies. In the mid 1990’s, as the Principal Investigator of the INCAS Trial, he played a key role in establishing the efficacy of NNRTI based highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART), which emerged as the new global Standard of Care at the 1996 Vancouver International AIDS Conference, of which he was a co-organizer. He then focused his attention on HAART access for underserved populations, including injection drug users, and the treatment of multiple drug resistant HIV infection with great success.

Since the late 1990’s he has pioneered the concept of Treatment as Prevention® (TasP®), where he was the first to advocate for the expansion of HAART coverage to curb the impact of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, in terms of decreasing progression to AIDS and death, as well as decreasing HIV transmission. Largely through his efforts, TasP® has now been implemented with great success in BC, and progressively embraced by UNAIDS, PEPfAR, the US Government, China and France, among others. It has been supported by the UNAIDS since 2011 and was fully incorporated in the World Health Organization’s Consolidated ARV Guidelines in 2013. In 2014, TasP® inspired Dr. Montaner to author an ambitious global target for HIV treatment: the UNAIDS 90-90-90 Target to end AIDS as a pandemic by 2030. A part of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, this target was established to end AIDS, by ensuring that 90% of people of people living with HIV are diagnosed, 90% of those diagnosed are on treatment and 90% of those on treatment have an undetectable viral load.

Recently, Dr. Montaner’s work has expanded towards building on the successes seen with TasP® in HIV to improve the treatment and support services for the concurrent health conditions facing those living with HIV. Applying the strategy to conditions including hepatitis C, COPD, substance use disorder and others, Dr. Montaner is focused on preventative treatment, improved access to primary care and building Healthcare Sustainability. This work is now underway at the Hope to Health Research & Innovation Centre which opened in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside in 2019 and provides harm reduction services and wraparound primary care services for those traditionally underserved by the healthcare system.

Dr. Montaner has received numerous awards and distinctions for his research work, among them the Knowledge Translation Award from the Canadian Institutes of Health (CIHR), Prix Galien Award, Albert Einstein World of Science Award, Hope is a Vaccine Award from the Global Alliance to Immunize against AIDS, and the David Barry DART Achievement Award that is given in recognition of invaluable contributions to the field of HIV drug discovery. He has received the Grand Decoration of Honour for Services to Austria, The Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal for contributions to the field of HIV/AIDS, “Senador Domingo Faustino Sarmiento” from the Argentina Senate of the Nation presented to him by the Honorable Amado Boudou, Vice President of Argentina, and the Honorable Maria Laura Leguizamon, Senator of Buenos Aires, three Doctor of Science honoris causa degrees from Simon Fraser University, Cordoba University and the University of Buenos Aires, and an honorary fellow at Douglas College. He is a Member of the Order of British Columbia and an Officer of the Order of Canada, and has been inducted into both the Royal Society of Canada-The Academies of Arts, Humanities and Sciences (RSC) and into the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame. He has been named a Killam Professor, the highest honor UBC can confer on a faculty member, and celebrated among six Medical Groundbreakers on a Canada Post stamp honouring groundbreaking contributions made by Canadian physicians and researchers who revolutionized their fields of health care.