Harold E. Varmus

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Harold Eliot Varmus

Harold Eliot Varmus (born December 18, 1939 in Oceanside , Nassau County , New York ) is an American virologist , known for research on cancer-causing genes ( oncogenes ) in healthy cells.

Life

Varmus first studied English literature at Amherst College (bachelor's degree in 1961), continued his studies at Harvard University (master's degree in 1962), but then switched to medicine. Since he was rejected at Harvard, he studied at Columbia University (MD degree in 1966) and was then at a mission hospital in India (in Bareilly ) and at the Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York City, where he completed his specialist training (internship, residency) . As an alternative to military service, he was at the National Institutes of Health in 1968 , where he worked on gene regulation in bacterial cells with Ira Pastan. In 1970 he went to the laboratory of J. Michael Bishop at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) as a post-doctoral student . Together with Bishop he discovered the first human oncogene there. Their joint research later earned them the Nobel Prize. In 1972 Varmus became Assistant Professor at UCSF and in 1979 Professor.

From 1993 to 1999 he was director of the National Institutes of Health , a sub-agency of the US Department of Health . From 2000 he was President of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. In 2010 he became director of the National Cancer Institute.

In addition to the mechanism of tumor development ( oncogenes , studied with retroviruses), he also examined virus replication, the HI virus and the hepatitis B virus, as well as breast cancer tumors in mice.

Varmus is committed to free access to scientific journals and, in this context, is a co-founder of the Public Library of Science and on the council of BioMed Central (a publisher for open access journals). He has been married since 1969 and has two sons.

Awards

Varmus received the Melanie Bronfman Award in Breast Cancer and in 1984 a Gairdner Foundation International Award .

In 1982 he received the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research and in 1984 the Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. Prize . In 1989 he and J. Michael Bishop received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for their discovery of the cellular origin of potentially carcinogenic retroviruses ".

In 2001 he received the National Medal of Science . In 2010 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Massachusetts Medical School. In 2012 he received the Glenn T. Seaborg Medal .

Varmus is a member of the National Academy of Sciences , the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , the American Philosophical Society, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, as well as the American Society for Virology and the American Society for Microbiology .

See also

literature

  • Gisela Baumgart: Varmus, Harold Eliot. In: Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 1436.
  • Volker Wunderlich: How normal genes become cancer genes. In: Wiss. Progress Volume 40, Issue 1, 1996, pp. 4-6.

Web links

Commons : Harold E. Varmus  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Harold E. Varmus: Cellular oncogenes and retroviruses. In: Ann. Rev. Biochem. Volume 52, 1983, pp. 301-354.
  2. ↑ Harold E. Varmus: Retroviruses and Oncogenes I. In: Angewandte Chemie. Vol. 102, 1990, pp. 756-764.
personal data
SURNAME Varmus, Harold E.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Varmus, Harold Eliot
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American virologist
DATE OF BIRTH December 18, 1939
PLACE OF BIRTH Oceanside , New York