Robert Gallo

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Robert C. Gallo with colleagues (early 1980s)

Robert Charles Gallo (born March 23, 1937 in Waterbury , Connecticut ) is an American virologist .

Life

In 1959 Gallo graduated from Providence College as a BA at Jefferson Medical College , he received his doctorate in medicine in 1963. He then worked for 30 years at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda (Maryland) from 1965 , where he headed the Tumor Cell Biology Laboratory (TCBL) of the National Cancer Institute from 1972 . Since 1996 he has been the director of the Institute of Human Virology at the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute (IHV).

Scientific achievements

Robert Gallo became famous as the discoverer of the first human retroviruses ( HTLV-1 = human T-lymphotropic virus 1 and HTLV-2 = human T-lymphotropic virus 2 ) in the early 1980s. In 1983, almost parallel to the French virologist Luc Montagnier and his colleague Françoise Barré-Sinoussi at the Paris Institute Pasteur, he discovered another retrovirus, which he initially called "HTLV-III" (Montagnier called it "LAV" = lymphadenopathy) associated virus). It was later named HIV- 1 (human immunodeficiency virus 1).

Dispute over HIV discovery

In the case of HIV, a dispute over priorities arose between Montagnier and Gallo, which took on real political dimensions (among other things, it was the subject of a summit between Prime Minister Jacques Chirac and President Ronald Reagan ). It also concerned the patented use of a newly developed serological test for HIV infection. In 1991, Gallo resigned his claim to first discover HIV. Today the team of Luc Montagnier is credited with the first discovery. Accordingly, the 2008 Nobel Prize for Medicine was awarded to Montagnier and Barré-Sinoussi - but not to Gallo.

Life experience and science

According to his autobiography , the death of his little sister in childhood from leukemia was a formative event that aroused his interest in cancer research at an early stage. Since the late 1960s, Gallo has concentrated his research on possible human tumor viruses as triggers of malignant diseases. In the 1960s and 1970s, many researchers believed that a significant proportion of human cancers were caused by viruses . Viruses of this kind had been found in many animal species, e.g. B. the murine leukemia virus (also a retrovirus). In the early 1970s, the genetics of the retroviruses were revealed. However, the search for human retroviruses was unsuccessful for a long time, despite great efforts and great resources. By the late 1970s, most scientists had shelved the idea of ​​possible human retroviruses, and researchers who were still studying them were increasingly seen as outsiders. The discovery of the HTL viruses and shortly thereafter the HI viruses were a sensation and gave retrovirus research a new impetus. Together with Luc Montagnier , Gallo was awarded the Japan Prize in 1988 for the discovery of the HI virus ; In 2009 he received the $ 1 million Dan David Prize .

Non-award of the Nobel Prize and criticism of it

The 2008 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine was awarded exclusively to Montagnier and Barré-Sinoussi “for the discovery of the human immunodeficiency virus”, as the Nobel Committee stated in the statement. The fact that Gallo was not taken into account here has been criticized by well-known virologists. According to a report in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, member of the Nobel Prize Committee Bo Angelin replied: "If we had had the slightest doubt whether more scientists were decisively involved in this discovery [of the HIV virus], we would certainly not have excluded anyone."

Additional Services

Robert Gallo's group also discovered the cytokine interleukin-2 and, in 1986, the human herpes virus type 6 (HHV-6), the causative agent of three-day fever (Roseola infantum) .

For his work Gallo has won numerous awards, including the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research 1982 (together with John Michael Bishop , Raymond L. Erikson , Hidesaburō Hanafusa , Harold E. Varmus ), the Charles S. Mott Prize 1984, the Albert Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research 1986 (together with Luc Montagnier ), a Gairdner Foundation International Award 1987, the Warren Alpert Foundation Prize 1997 and the Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize 1999.

In 1988 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences .

literature

  • Robert Gallo: The Hunt for the Virus - AIDS, Cancer and the Human Retrovirus. The story of its discovery . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1991, ISBN 3-10-024404-4 . (his scientific autobiography)
  • Bärbel Häcker: Gallo, Robert Charles. 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. 454.

Web links

Commons : Robert Charles Gallo  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Bärbel Häcker: Gallo, Robert Charles. 2005, p. 454.
  2. ↑ Robert Gallo et al .: Isolation of human T-cell leukaemia virus in AIDS. In: Science. Volume 220, 1983, pp. 965-867.
  3. ↑ Archive report: Science subverted in AIDS dispute. ( Memento from December 26, 2009 in the web archive archive.today ) In: Chicago Tribune . October 6, 2008.
  4. ↑ Bärbel Häcker: Gallo, Robert Charles. 2005, p. 454 (cited).
  5. ↑ Press Release, October 6, 2008
  6. ↑ J. Cohen, M. Enserink: Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. HIV, HPV researchers honored, but one scientist is left out. In: Science . 322 (5899), 2008, pp. 174-175. PMID 18946912
  7. ↑ C. Ballantyne: Nobel decision stirs viral dismay. In: Nat Med . 14 (11), 2008, p. 1132. PMID 18989265
  8. ↑ Süddeutsche Zeitung. KNOWLEDGE section, October 7, 2008, p. 18.
personal data
SURNAME Gallo, Robert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gallo, Robert Charles
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American virologist
DATE OF BIRTH March 23, 1937
PLACE OF BIRTH Waterbury , Connecticut , United States