Campus News—Page 2
Yolanda Morton: First Black
Female Lieutenant

Gazette—Page 3
William Reinhardt Dies at
Age 77

Benefits—Page 6
Congratulations to Special
Performance Award Winners

Medsounds—Page 8
Young Polish Woman Gets Her
Heart Fixed

 

Volume 4, Number 17

October 14-27, 1989

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bishop, Varmus Become UCSF’s First Nobel Prize Winners

Virologists Harold E. Varmus and J. Michael
Bishop, UCSF’s two “oncogene” experts,
have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Medi-
cine or Physiology. They are the first ever
from this campus to receive a Nobel Prize.

Both professors of microbiology, bio-
chemistry and biophysics, Varmus and
Bishop received the prize for their “discovery
of the cellular origin of retroviral oncogenes,”
according to the Nobel committee in
Stockholm.

The timing couldn't be better. The Nobel
Prize news comes to this campus practically
on the eve of our 125th Anniversary celebra-
tion, which will be this Saturday, October 14.
Upon hearing the news, Mayor Agnos stated,
“The Nobel Prize in Medicine is the pinnacle
of achievement for medical research. UC
San Francisco, with two researchers hon-
ored in one year, demonstrates to the world
what we in San Francisco already know
about its standards of excellence. The an-
nouncement reinforces UCSF’s position at
the cutting edge of biomedical research
worldwide.”

Bishop and Varmus discovered that can-
cer-causing genes called “oncogenes’—
which were first found in viruses—can be
found in the cells of all normal animals, rang-
ing from flies to humans. Their discovery
raised the possibility that humans carry the
seeds of cancer in their own genes. These
genes, called proto-oncogenes, appear to
be essential to normal development, but can

become cancer genes when they are dam-
aged or go out of control.

The work of Bishop, Varmus and others
suggests that carcinogens—such as chemi-
cals, radiation and viruses—damage these
proto-oncogenes and trigger the develop-
ment of cancer. If further evidence confirms
this theory, it may lead to better ways to pre-
vent and treat cancer.

Varmus has studied retroviruses for more
than 18 years and Bishop for more than 23
years, seeking to determine how they grow
and how they alter the fundamental behavior
of cells. Rous sarcoma virus is one such
retrovirus that causes cancer in chickens by
inserting its own genes into the genetic mate-
rial (DNA) of a cell. From work on the Rous
sarcoma virus, most of it done together,
came several important conclusions that are
leading scientists closer to an understanding
of cancer.

Neither Bishop, who directs UCSF’s
George W. Hooper Research Foundation,
nor Varmus, American Cancer Society Pro-
fessor of Molecular Virology, expected that
their work would lead to the Nobel. “I don’t go
to work thinking about the Nobel Prize,” says
Varmus, “I go to work thinking about the next
experiment.”

And what did Varmus and Bishop do that
afternoon after learning of their Nobel Prize?
They went to see the Giants defeat the Cubs,
of course.

 

Mikke! Aaland

Harold Varmus (left) gives thumbs-up at Monday's press conference on campus announcing
the Nobel Prize given to both him and J. Michael Bishop (right).