Janet W. Hartley | |
---|---|
Born | |
Alma mater | University of Maryland, College Park George Washington University |
Years active | 1953-2009 |
Known for |
|
Scientific career | |
Fields | Virology, oncology |
Institutions | National Institutes of Health |
Janet W. Hartley (born March 25, 1928) is an American virologist who worked at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). A Washingtonian, she received degrees in bacteriology and virology research before graduating with a Ph.D. and joining the National Institutes of Health lab of Bob Huebner. Later becoming section head for the virology department, she would spend the next four decades researching a variety of viruses, discovering numerous species, and identifying new methods for quantifying viruses and the involvement of viral infection in cancer development.
Born on March 25, 1928 in Washington, D.C., [1] Hartley started her education in the aftermath of World War Two, joining the University of Maryland, College Park (UMD) and completing a Bachelor's degree in bacteriology in 1949. She wanted to continue her education while also conducting research, so her UMD mentors suggested she apply for a fellowship at George Washington University. Completing her Master's degree in 1951, she continued in her studies to earn a Ph.D. [2] While working on her doctoral degree, she conducted virology research in Bob Huebner's National Institutes of Health (NIH) lab as a laboratory technician starting in 1953. She graduated with her Ph.D. in 1957. [3]
Remaining at the NIH for several decades, she would later become section head in NIAID for the Laboratory of Viral Diseases department. [2] This department was later folded into the Laboratory of Immunopathology and Hartley was made chief for the viral oncology section. [4] She ended up publishing over 200 papers through her work and particularly advanced understanding of viral diseases in mice that would be foundational for HIV research. [2] She also was a part of the editorial board for the Journal of the National Cancer Institute . [4] She retired in 1995, but continued as a volunteer scientist emerita at the NIH until 2009. For her final retirement from scientific work, she established the Wallace Prescott Rowe Memorial Award in 2009 to help fund future virologists from the University of Maryland. [2]
The earliest research Hartley was involved in for her university degrees involved finding ways to effectively isolate and quantitate the number of viruses in a sample, which resulted in her making assay detectors for tissue cultures. [4] Her focus in Huebner's lab was research on Adenoviruses , which had recently been successfully isolated and grown in a lab, expanding understanding of the many diseases caused by the viral family. She then went on to study Cytomegaloviruses , which also formed the basis for her graduate thesis. The growing use of mice as model organisms prompted research into diseases of mice, which then led Huebner's lab alongside Wallace P. Rowe's lab to study Polyoma as the first researched tumor virus. This, in turn, created the general scientific understanding that viruses were capable of causing cancer, previously believed impossible. [3]
Her years of research also included discovering new viruses, including the adenovirus that targets mice, one of the papovaviruses that affect rabbits, and a specially important finding of the cytomegalovirus in monkeys, as this allowed for the prevention of contamination from the cytomegalovirus of vaccines produced with monkeys. [4]
While at university, she was a part of the scientific honor society Sigma Xi. Hartley would also go on to become a member of the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine, the American Society for Microbiology, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. [1]
Hartley's scientific work has resulted in multiple related awards being given to her, including the Kimble Methodology Award from the American Public Health Association, the Public Health Service Distinguished Service Medal, and the NIH Director's Award. [4] The 1969 annual awards for the Washington Academy of Sciences saw Hartley named among six for outstanding scientific achievements for her "contributions to animal virology". [1] In 1989, she was given the DHHS Distinguished Service Award by NIH Director Anthony Fauci for her 34 years of contributions to NIAID. [5]
Howard Martin Temin was an American geneticist and virologist. He discovered reverse transcriptase in the 1970s at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, for which he shared the 1975 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Renato Dulbecco and David Baltimore.
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases is one of the 27 institutes and centers that make up the National Institutes of Health (NIH), an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). NIAID's mission is to conduct basic and applied research to better understand, treat, and prevent infectious, immunologic, and allergic diseases.
Robert Joseph Huebner, was an American physician and virologist whose research into viruses, their causes and treatment that led to his breakthrough insights into the connections between viruses and cancer, leading to new treatments, as well as his hypothesized oncogene, which was discovered to be a trigger for normal cells turning cancerous.
Albert Zaven Kapikian (1930–2014) was an Armenian-American virologist who developed the first licensed vaccine against rotavirus, the most common cause of severe diarrhea in infants. He was awarded the Sabin Gold Medal for his pioneering work on the vaccine. He is the 13th recipient of this recognition, awarded annually by the Sabin Vaccine Institute. Called the father of human gastroenteritis virus research, Kapikian identified the first norovirus, initially called Norwalk virus, in 1972; and he and his colleagues at the National Institutes of Health identified the hepatitis A virus in 1973.
Sarah Elizabeth Stewart was a Mexican-American researcher who pioneered the field of viral oncology research, and the first to show that cancer-causing viruses can spread from animal to animal. She and Bernice Eddy co-discovered the first polyoma virus, and SE (Stewart-Eddy) polyoma virus is named after them.
Rocky Mountain Laboratories (RML) is part of the NIH Intramural Research Program and is located in Hamilton, Montana. Operated by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, RML conducts research on maximum containment pathogens such as Ebola as well as research on prions and intracellular pathogens such as Coxiella burnetii and Francisella tularensis. RML operates one of the few Biosafety level 4 laboratories in the United States, as well as Biosafety level 3 and ABSL3/4 laboratories.
The Vaccine Research Center (VRC), is an intramural division of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The mission of the VRC is to discover and develop both vaccines and antibody-based products that target infectious diseases.
Robert Merritt Chanock was an American pediatrician and virologist who made major contributions to the prevention and treatment of childhood respiratory infections in more than 50 years spent at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Leor S. Weinberger is an American virologist and quantitative biologist. He is credited with discovering the HIV virus latency circuit, which provided the first experimental evidence that stochastic fluctuations ('noise') in gene expression are used for cell fate decisions. He has also pioneered the concept of therapeutic interfering particles, or “TIPs”, which are resistance-proof antivirals. His TED talk on this novel antiviral approach 20 years in the making has been called a "highlight" of TED and received a standing ovation from the live audience.
Bernard Moss is a virologist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the United States National Institutes of Health. He is the Chief of the NIAID Laboratory of Viral Diseases and of the NIAID Genetic Engineering Section. He is known for his work on poxviruses.
Norman Post Salzman was an American virologist. He spent much of his career as a scientist at the United States National Institutes of Health, where he rose to become the chief of the Laboratory on the Biology of Viruses; after retiring from the NIH in 1986, he worked at Georgetown University and later at the Frederick Cancer Research and Development Center. Salzman died of pancreatic cancer in 1997 at age 71.
Brian R. Murphy is an American virologist and former co-chief of the Laboratory of Infectious Diseases at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease.
Emmie de Wit is a Dutch-American virologist. She is chief of the molecular pathogenesis unit at the Rocky Mountain Laboratories. Her research combines pathogenesis studies with detailed molecular analyses to identify molecular determinants of severe respiratory tract disease within the virus and the host.
Andrea Marzi is a German-American virologist. She is chief of the immunobiology and molecular virology unit at the Rocky Mountain Laboratories. Marzi investigates the pathogenesis of filoviruses and vaccine development. She received the Loeffler-Frosch medal in recognition of her research.
Kizzmekia "Kizzy" Shanta Corbett is an American viral immunologist. She is an Assistant Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Shutzer Assistant Professor at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute since June 2021.
Kim Yarbrough Green is an American virologist. She is chief of the caliciviruses section in the laboratory of infectious diseases at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. She researches noroviruses in human disease, disease prevention, and control strategies.
Wallace Prescott Rowe was an American virologist, known for his research on retroviruses and oncoviruses and as a co-discoverer of adenoviruses.
Heinz (Heinrich) Ulrich Feldmann is a German-American virologist who currently serves as the chief of the laboratory of virology at Rocky Mountain Laboratories, NIAID and heads the Disease Modelling and Transmission section. His research focuses on highly pathogenic viruses that require strict biocontainment, including those that cause viral hemorrhagic fever such as Ebola and Lassa. He has been responsible for the development of timely viral countermeasures including the rVSV-ZEBOV vaccine (Ervebro), development of vaccines and drugs against SARS-CoV-2, and epidemiology of SARS-CoV.
Gueh-Djen (Edith) Hsiung was a virologist and professor emeritus of laboratory medicine. She was one of the first women to achieve the rank of professor at the Yale School of Medicine.
Marietjie Van Aardt Venter or simply Marietjie Venter, is a South African virologist and researcher. She serves as a distinguished professor and research chair in Emerging Viral Threats & One Health (EViTOH) in the Infectious Disease and Oncology Research Institute (IDORI) at the University of the Witwatersrand. Since 2021, she has chaired the SAGO, a WHO permanent advisory body on the origins of emerging infectious diseases including COVID-19. Prior to this, Venter has been serving in the Department of Medical Virology at the University of Pretoria since 2005, leading the Zoonotic Arbo & Respiratory Viruses research program and co-founding the Centre for Viral Zoonoses and is the Director for the Centre for Emerging arbo and respiratory virus research (CEARV) in an extraordinary Professor position at University of Pretoria.