Etienne de Harven | |
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Born | March 5, 1928 |
Died | March 6, 2019 |
Alma mater | Université Libre de Bruxelles |
Awards | Rik et Nel Wouters Award (1969), presented by Queen Fabiola of Belgium for Cancer Research. [1] President of the Electron Microscopy Society of America in 1976 |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Pathology, electron microscopy, cancer research |
Institutions | Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (1956-1981), University of Toronto (1981-1993) Cornell Graduate School |
Academic advisors | Charles Oberling, Wilhelm Bernhard |
Etienne de Harven (1928-2019) was a Belgian-born pathologist and electron microscopist. Born in Brussels, he did most of his work in New York City, Paris and Toronto.[ citation needed ] He did pioneering research on viruses, mostly related to murine leukemia. [2] He is former President of the Electron Microscopy Society of America (now Microscopy Society of America). [3] [4]
De Harven obtained his medical degree from the University of Brussels. [1] He later worked at the Institute of Cancer of Villejuif under Charles Oberling and Wilhelm Bernhard, where he made pioneering observations of the structure of centrioles. [5]
He was subsequently hired by Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, where he worked alongside Charlotte Friend and studied viruses, mostly in mice systems [6] and the causation and incidence of leukemia [7] and other malignant diseases related to those viruses. [8] [9] Later, he provided the first description of a viral budding. [10] While at Sloan-Kettering, de Harven was part of a team which discovered "virus-like particles" in cells taken from patients with Hodgkin's disease. [11] He became professor of cell biology at the University of Cornell and later of pathology at the University of Toronto, where he researched the marking of antigens on the surface of lymphocytes. [12] [13]
As former President of the Microscopy Society of America, he published several papers, mostly related to Cancer Pathologies and electron microscopy procedures for viral explorations. [14]
De Harven was a prominent skeptic of the scientific validity of the link between HIV and AIDS, [15] one of a group invited in 2000 to South Africa by president Thabo Mbeki to serve on a presidential panel on AIDS. [16] [17] He published a book in 2005 entitled Les Dix Plus Gros Mensonges sur le SIDA (Ten Lies About AIDS),[ citation needed ] in which he denies a connection between the HIV virus and AIDS, instead attributing the disease to lifestyle and environmental factors. [18]
De Harven died in 2019. [19]
In cell biology a centriole is a cylindrical organelle composed mainly of a protein called tubulin. Centrioles are found in most eukaryotic cells, but are not present in conifers (Pinophyta), flowering plants (angiosperms) and most fungi, and are only present in the male gametes of charophytes, bryophytes, seedless vascular plants, cycads, and Ginkgo. A bound pair of centrioles, surrounded by a highly ordered mass of dense material, called the pericentriolar material (PCM), makes up a structure called a centrosome.
A retrovirus is a type of virus that inserts a DNA copy of its RNA genome into the DNA of a host cell that it invades, thus changing the genome of that cell. After invading a host cell's cytoplasm, the virus uses its own reverse transcriptase enzyme to produce DNA from its RNA genome, the reverse of the usual pattern, thus retro (backwards). The new DNA is then incorporated into the host cell genome by an integrase enzyme, at which point the retroviral DNA is referred to as a provirus. The host cell then treats the viral DNA as part of its own genome, transcribing and translating the viral genes along with the cell's own genes, producing the proteins required to assemble new copies of the virus. Many retroviruses cause serious diseases in humans, other mammals, and birds.
Structural biology is a field that is many centuries old which, as defined by the Journal of Structural Biology, deals with structural analysis of living material at every level of organization. Early structural biologists throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries were primarily only able to study structures to the limit of the naked eye's visual acuity and through magnifying glasses and light microscopes.
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Gammaretrovirus is a genus in the Retroviridae family. Example species are the murine leukemia virus and the feline leukemia virus. They cause various sarcomas, leukemias and immune deficiencies in mammals, reptiles and birds.
The genome and proteins of HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) have been the subject of extensive research since the discovery of the virus in 1983. "In the search for the causative agent, it was initially believed that the virus was a form of the Human T-cell leukemia virus (HTLV), which was known at the time to affect the human immune system and cause certain leukemias. However, researchers at the Pasteur Institute in Paris isolated a previously unknown and genetically distinct retrovirus in patients with AIDS which was later named HIV." Each virion comprises a viral envelope and associated matrix enclosing a capsid, which itself encloses two copies of the single-stranded RNA genome and several enzymes. The discovery of the virus itself occurred two years following the report of the first major cases of AIDS-associated illnesses.
The murine leukemia viruses are retroviruses named for their ability to cause cancer in murine (mouse) hosts. Some MLVs may infect other vertebrates. MLVs include both exogenous and endogenous viruses. Replicating MLVs have a positive sense, single-stranded RNA (ssRNA) genome that replicates through a DNA intermediate via the process of reverse transcription.
Vorinostat (rINN) also known as Suberoylanilide hydroxamic acid is a member of a larger class of compounds that inhibit histone deacetylases (HDAC). Histone deacetylase inhibitors (HDI) have a broad spectrum of epigenetic activities.
Xenotropic murine leukemia virus–related virus (XMRV) is a retrovirus which was first described in 2006 as an apparently novel human pathogen found in tissue samples from men with prostate cancer. Initial reports erroneously linked the virus to prostate cancer and later to chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), leading to considerable interest in the scientific and patient communities, investigation of XMRV as a potential cause of multiple medical conditions, and public-health concerns about the safety of the donated blood supply.
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A virus is a submicroscopic infectious agent that replicates only inside the living cells of an organism. Viruses infect all life forms, from animals and plants to microorganisms, including bacteria and archaea. Since Dmitri Ivanovsky's 1892 article describing a non-bacterial pathogen infecting tobacco plants and the discovery of the tobacco mosaic virus by Martinus Beijerinck in 1898, more than 11,000 of the millions of virus species have been described in detail. Viruses are found in almost every ecosystem on Earth and are the most numerous type of biological entity. The study of viruses is known as virology, a subspeciality of microbiology.
Françoise Barré-Sinoussi is a French virologist and Director of the Regulation of Retroviral Infections Division and Professor at the Institut Pasteur in Paris, France. Born in Paris, France, Barré-Sinoussi performed some of the fundamental work in the identification of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) as the cause of AIDS. In 2008, Barré-Sinoussi was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, together with her former mentor, Luc Montagnier, for their discovery of HIV. She mandatorily retired from active research on August 31, 2015 and fully retired by some time in 2017.
Charlotte Friend was an American virologist. She is best known for her discovery of the Friend leukemia virus. She helped to establish the concept of the oncovirus, studied the role of the host immune response in disease development, and helped define modern retrovirology.
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