Flossie Wong-Staal

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Flossie Wong-Staal

Flossie Wong-Staal (born as Wong Yee-ching , Chinese 黄 以 静, Pinyin Huáng Yǐjìng ; born August 27, 1946 in Guangzhou , Guangdong , Republic of China ; † July 8, 2020 in La Jolla , California ) was an American virologist , Molecular biologist and university professor of Chinese origin. She was one of the scientists around Robert Gallo who developed the HI virusidentified as the causative agent of the immunodeficiency disease AIDS . In 1984 Wong-Staal succeeded in cloning the HI virus and deciphering the function of its genes. In doing so, she made a significant contribution to the development of AIDS tests.

From 1990 to 2002, Wong-Staal held the Florence-Seeley-Riford Professorship in AIDS Research at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). She was a co-founder and, after leaving the University of California, Chief Scientific Officer of the pharmaceutical company Immusol. Wong-Staal later began to apply what she learned from AIDS research to the hepatitis C virus . In 2007 Immusol was renamed iTherX Pharmaceuticals; The company conducted research on vaccines and drugs against hepatitis C with Wong-Staal as CSO .

Youth and Studies

Wong Yee-ching was born in 1946 in Guangzhou , Guangdong, the third of four children of the cloth merchant Wong Sueh-fung. Numerous publications incorrectly give her year of birth as 1947. After the Chinese Communist Party's victory in the Chinese Civil War , the Wong family fled to Hong Kong in 1952 . There Wong attended the Roman Catholic elite school Marymount Secondary School and showed excellent performance in the natural sciences. Her teachers encouraged Wong to study in the United States and suggested that she choose a name that sounded English. Wong's father then chose the name Flossie after a tropical cyclone that had recently struck Hong Kong.

At the age of 18, Wong left Hong Kong to study at the University of California, Los Angeles . In 1968 she graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in bacteriology . She continued her studies and received her doctorate in 1972 with a dissertation in molecular biology in which she compared the genetic makeup of mutant and wild tobacco plants. After completing her doctorate, Wong-Staal did research as a postdoc at the University of California, San Diego , until 1973 .

National Cancer Institute

In 1973 she went to the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in Bethesda , Maryland , where she did research on retroviruses in Robert Gallo's Tumor Cell Biology Lab (TCBL) . There she became one of the most important scientists in the study of the HI virus and the genes that control its activity.

By the late 1970s, the idea that human cancers could be caused by viruses had been rejected by most cancer researchers. In 1980, Gallo and his colleagues discovered the human T-lymphotropic virus 1 (HTLV-1), the first virus that can cause cancer in humans. A little later they discovered the human T-lymphotropic virus 2 (HTLV-2). As the number of cases of the new immunodeficiency disease known as AIDS increased in the United States, Gallo and Wong-Staal became interested in the sexual transmissibility and T-lymphocyte infestation that were also observed in the HTLV .

In 1982 Wong-Staal became head of the Department of Molecular Genetics of Hematopoietic Stem Cells at the NCI. In 1983 she was part of Robert Gallo's team that recognized the HIV virus, initially known as HTLV-3, as the causative agent of AIDS. A French team led by Luc Montagnier had previously isolated this virus, and the French research was based on the findings of Gallos and Wong-Staal.

In 1984 Wong-Staal cloned the HI virus and analyzed its molecular structure. Their research helped us understand the long latency period of HIV infection and formed the basis for the development of the first HIV tests. Later, a group of researchers led by Wong-Staal studied the effect of the Tat protein in the virus strain HIV-1 on the growth of cells in lesions of Kaposi's sarcoma in AIDS patients.

In 1990 Flossie Wong-Staal took fourth place on a list of the most frequently cited American scientists up to the age of 45 with 7,772 references behind Joachim Messing , Ellis L. Reinherz and Edward Witten .

University of California, San Diego

On January 1, 1990, Wong-Staal left the National Cancer Institute and went to the University of California, San Diego , where she was appointed to the Florence-Seeley-Riford Chair in AIDS Research. Her goal was to develop a vaccine against the HI virus and to continue her research on the genes that control the reproduction and activity of the HI virus. In 1994, Wong-Staal became director of the new AIDS research center at the University of California, San Diego. The aim of her research was to develop a gene therapy in which ribozymes were to be attached to the RNA of HIV in order to suppress the virus in stem cells . To do this, the genes that ensured that the virus remained in the body of an infected patient for decades should be modified so that they remain permanently active.

Pharmaceutical Industry

Wong-Staal was a co-founder and, after leaving the University of California in 2002, head of research and development (Chief Scientific Officer) of the AIDS research pharmaceutical company Immusol. The company was renamed iTherX Pharmaceuticals in 2007 after hepatitis C vaccines and drugs became a focus of research.

family

In 1971, while doing her PhD at the University of California, Los Angeles, Wong married a fellow student, oncologist Stephen P. Staal. The marriage, which was divorced around 1990, had two daughters. Her second marriage was to the neurologist Jeffrey McKelvy from San Diego. She died of pneumonia .

Publications (chronological selection)

Awards

literature

Web links

Commons : Flossie Wong-Staal  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Gary Robbins: Flossie Wong-Staal, pioneering UCSD virologist who helped identify AIDS cause, dies. In: The San Diego Union-Tribune. July 9, 2020, accessed on July 10, 2020 .
  2. ↑ a b c d Leading AIDS Researcher Chosen For New Chair At UC-San Diego. In: The Scientist . February 18, 1990, archived from the original on July 10, 2020 ; accessed on August 27, 2021 (English).
  3. ↑ a b c d e f Lisa Yount: A to Z of Women in Science and Math, Revised Edition . Facts On File, New York 2008, ISBN 978-0-8160-6695-7 , pp. 315-317 .
  4. ↑ a b c Chelsea Clinton : Flossie Wong-Staal . In: Hillary Rodham Clinton , Chelsea Clinton (Eds.): The Book of Gutsy Women . Simon & Schuster, New York 2019, ISBN 978-1-5011-7841-2 , pp. 185-187 .
  5. ↑ a b c David Pendlebury: Science Leaders: Researchers To Watch In The Next Decade. In: the-scientist.com. May 27, 1990, archived from the original on July 10, 2020 ; accessed on August 27, 2021 (English).
  6. ↑ Lee Ratner, William Haseltine, Roberto Patarca, Kenneth J. Livak, Bruno Starcich, Steven F. Josephs, Ellen R. Doran, J. Antoni Rafalski, Erik A. Whitehorn: Complete nucleotide sequence of the AIDS virus, HTLV-III . In: Nature . tape 313 , no. 6000 , Jan. 24, 1985, pp. 277-284 , doi : 10.1038 / 313277a0 , PMID 2578615 .
personal data
SURNAME Wong-Staal, Flossie
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wong Yee-ching (Chinese name); 黄 以 静 (Chinese name); Huáng Yǐjìng (Chinese name); Wong, Flossie (premarital American name); Staal, Flossie (married name)
SHORT DESCRIPTION Chinese-American virologist and molecular biologist
BIRTH DATE August 27, 1946
PLACE OF BIRTH Guangzhou , Guangdong , Republic of China
DATE OF DEATH July 8, 2020
PLACE OF DEATH La Jolla , California