A French scientist who shared this year's Nobel prize for medicine said on Saturday he believed the transmission of AIDS could be eliminated within years.

Luc Montagnier, director of the World Foundation for AIDS Research and Prevention, told a news conference that halting the transmission of AIDS would make it a disease much like others.

"Our job, of course, is to find complementary treatment to eradicate the infection. I think it's not impossible to do it within a few years," Montagnier said.