Baruch Samuel Blumberg, known as Barry Blumberg, was an American physician, geneticist, and co-recipient of the 1976 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, for his work on the hepatitis B virus while an investigator at the NIH and at the Fox Chase Cancer Center. He was president of the American Philosophical Society from 2005 until his death.
Harold Eliot Varmus is an American Nobel Prize-winning scientist. He is currently the Lewis Thomas University Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine and a senior associate at the New York Genome Center.
An oncovirus or oncogenic virus is a virus that can cause cancer. This term originated from studies of acutely transforming retroviruses in the 1950–60s, when the term oncornaviruses was used to denote their RNA virus origin. With the letters RNA removed, it now refers to any virus with a DNA or RNA genome causing cancer and is synonymous with tumor virus or cancer virus. The vast majority of human and animal viruses do not cause cancer, probably because of longstanding co-evolution between the virus and its host. Oncoviruses have been important not only in epidemiology, but also in investigations of cell cycle control mechanisms such as the retinoblastoma protein.
Virus-like particles (VLPs) are molecules that closely resemble viruses, but are non-infectious because they contain no viral genetic material. They can be naturally occurring or synthesized through the individual expression of viral structural proteins, which can then self assemble into the virus-like structure. Combinations of structural capsid proteins from different viruses can be used to create recombinant VLPs. Both in-vivo assembly and in-vitro assembly have been successfully shown to form virus-like particles. VLPs derived from the Hepatitis B virus (HBV) and composed of the small HBV derived surface antigen (HBsAg) were described in 1968 from patient sera. VLPs have been produced from components of a wide variety of virus families including Parvoviridae, Retroviridae, Flaviviridae, Paramyxoviridae and bacteriophages. VLPs can be produced in multiple cell culture systems including bacteria, mammalian cell lines, insect cell lines, yeast and plant cells.
Alfred George Knudson, Jr. was an American physician and geneticist specializing in cancer genetics. Among his many contributions to the field was the formulation of the Knudson hypothesis in 1971, which explains the effects of mutation on carcinogenesis.
Rudolf Jaenisch is a professor of biology at MIT and a founding member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. He is a pioneer of transgenic science, in which an animal’s genetic makeup is altered. Jaenisch has focused on creating genetically modified mice to study cancer, epigenetic reprogramming and neurological diseases.
Viral vectors are modified viruses designed to deliver genetic material into cells. This process can be performed inside an organism or in cell culture. Viral vectors have widespread applications in basic research, agriculture, and medicine.
The Leeuwenhoek Lecture is a prize lecture of the Royal Society to recognize achievement in microbiology. The prize was originally given in 1950 and awarded annually, but from 2006 to 2018 was given triennially. From 2018 it will be awarded biennially.
HBsAg is the surface antigen of the hepatitis B virus (HBV). Its presence in blood indicates existing hepatitis B infection.
Lankenau Institute for Medical Research (LIMR), founded in 1927, is a nonprofit, biomedical research institute located on the campus of Lankenau Medical Center in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, serving as the research division of the Main Line Health system in suburban Philadelphia. LIMR focuses on studies of cancer, cardiovascular, autoimmune, gastrointestinal and other diseases.
Hepatitis B vaccine is a vaccine that prevents hepatitis B. The first dose is recommended within 24 hours of birth with either two or three more doses given after that. This includes those with poor immune function such as from HIV/AIDS and those born premature. It is also recommended that health-care workers be vaccinated. In healthy people, routine immunization results in more than 95% of people being protected.
A genetically modified mouse, genetically engineered mouse model (GEMM) or transgenic mouse is a mouse that has had its genome altered through the use of genetic engineering techniques. Genetically modified mice are commonly used for research or as animal models of human diseases and are also used for research on genes. Together with patient-derived xenografts (PDXs), GEMMs are the most common in vivo models in cancer research. Both approaches are considered complementary and may be used to recapitulate different aspects of disease. GEMMs are also of great interest for drug development, as they facilitate target validation and the study of response, resistance, toxicity and pharmacodynamics.
Enzo Paoletti was an Italian-American virologist who developed the technology to express foreign antigens in vaccinia and other poxviruses. This advance led to the development of vaccines against multiple disease-causing pathogens.
Beatrice Mintz was an American embryologist who contributed to the understanding of genetic modification, cellular differentiation, and cancer, particularly melanoma. Mintz was a pioneer of genetic engineering techniques and was among the first scientists to generate both chimeric and transgenic mammals.
Sir Bruce Anthony John Ponder FMedSci FAACR FRS FRCP is an English geneticist and cancer researcher. He is Emeritus Professor of Oncology at the University of Cambridge and former director of the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute and of the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Cancer Centre.
Dr. Manfred E. Bayer was a medical doctor and a microscopist, best known for his research in bacterial and viral infrastructure using electron microscopy. He was the first person to visualize yellow fever virus in cultured cells and to obtain ultra-thin sections of the cell wall of E. coli by penicillin.
Robert Palmer Beasley was an American physician, public health educator and epidemiologist whose work on hepatitis B involved extensive investigations in Taiwan. That work established that hepatitis B virus (HBV) is a primary cause of liver cancer and that hepatitis B virus is transmitted from mother to infant during childbirth. Beasley and his colleagues also proved that HBV mother-to-infant transmission is preventable by at-birth vaccination. Due to this work, the World Health Assembly designated HBV as the seventh global vaccine in 1992. He later became the author of HBV immunization policies for the World Health Organization.
Peter Carey Nowell was a cancer researcher and co-discoverer of the Philadelphia chromosome. At the time of his death, he was the Gaylord P. and Mary Louise Harnwell Emeritus Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
Alton Ivan Sutnick is an American medical researcher, educator and administrator. He is the author of over 200 scholarly publications.
The woolly monkey hepatitis B virus (WMHBV) is a viral species of the Orthohepadnavirus genus of the Hepadnaviridae family. Its natural host is the woolly monkey (Lagothrix), an inhabitant of South America categorized as a New World primate. WMHBV, like other hepatitis viruses, infects the hepatocytes, or liver cells, of its host organism. It can cause hepatitis, liver necrosis, cirrhosis, and hepatocellular carcinoma. Because nearly all species of Lagothrix are threatened or endangered, researching and developing a vaccine and/or treatment for WMHBV is important for the protection of the whole woolly monkey genus.
