Subject: Nobel Prize for Medicine Is Awarded To Oncogene Researchers
Date: Published: 10/10/89 (97 lines)
Source:  Wall Street Journal.  Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc. 

    Nobel Prize for Medicine Is Awarded
    To Oncogene Researchers in California
    ----
    By Marilyn Chase
    Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

    The Nobel Prize for medicine was awarded to two
 researchers at the University of California at San Francisco
 for their work on oncogenes, the seeds of cancer contained in
 the genetic code of all animals and humans.
    But the award sparked controversy in France, where a
 scientist associated with the project but not included in the
 prize claimed he had done much of the original research.
    The hints of discord marred a day of otherwise ebullient
 celebration.  Yesterday morning, Harold Eliot Varmus received
 a pre-dawn telephone call from Stockholm announcing that he
 and his longtime colleague J. Michael Bishop had won the
 prize for their work on the genes that cause the growth of
 malignant tumors.
    The Nobel committee -- recognizing an achievement that
 science-watchers speculated had been near the top of Nobel
 nominations for several years -- cited the two scientists for
 their "discovery of the cellular origin of retroviral
 oncogenes."  That discovery has transformed scientists'
 understanding of the development of malignant tumors as well
 as of the normal processes of cell growth and
 differentiation.  It has offered doctors new focal points for
 cancer prevention and treatment.
    The pair discovered that cancer-causing genes, first found
 in viruses, can be found in the cells of all animals, from
 flies to fish to human beings.  When damaged by chemicals,
 radiation or viruses, such genes, called proto-oncogenes, can
 spark the development of cancer.
    The 49-year-old Dr. Varmus and the 53-year-old Dr. Bishop
 -- both M. D. s -- have jointly spent a total of 41 years
 studying retroviruses, which are viruses that pass their
 genetic information in a backward or "retro" manner from RNA
 to DNA. Their course was set in 1976 when they published a
 landmark paper in the British journal Nature, showing that an
 oncogene in Rous sarcoma virus, which is responsible for
 causing cancer in chickens, is actually found in normal
 cells.  They reasoned that such sinister genes must also have
 a normal role to play at times, such as the regulation of
 cell growth and development, to explain why they are
 conserved in the species.  Since then, as many as 100
 oncogenes have been discovered, of which 40 appear to have a
 role in the formation of tumors in humans.
    In France, Dominique Stehelin, a co-author on the Nature
 paper, expressed disappointment that he wasn't included in
 the award.  Dr. Stehelin, a director of research at the
 National Center for Scientific Research at the Pasteur
 Institute in Lille, said he worked in the San Francisco lab
 "from 1972 to 1975, at a time when nobody other than me was
 working on the subject," the French news agency Agence
 France-Presse reported.
    Earlier yesterday, Dr. Varmus said Dr. Stehelin was "part
 of the winning team."  But a University of California
 spokesman later said that Dr. Stehelin had been a
 postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Bishop's laboratory.  While
 postdoctoral fellows do important technical work, carrying
 out ideas of the senior scientists, they are rarely included
 in such awards.
    The two Americans denied feeling that their work was
 epochal in its significance -- at least until the awards
 started coming in the early 1980s.  Perhaps the most telling
 was the Albert Lasker Medical Research Award, which is often
 seen as a harbinger of future Nobel Prizes, and which the two
 shared in 1982.
    "Until the Lasker Award, I didn't realize how highly {the
 work} was regarded," the elegant, silver-bearded Dr. Bishop
 said yesterday.  "I didn't know that people took it
 seriously."
    Day to day, Dr. Varmus said, experiments are like
 "cornerstones in an edifice" whose dimensions one has to
 stand back to appreciate.
    Currently, the two are continuing to probe the role of
 oncogenes, by creating transgenic mice endowed with extra
 copies of such genes.  Their work has touched upon
 neuroblastoma, a nerve-cell tumor, and Dr. Bishop is
 investigating the skin cancer squamous cell carcinoma, and
 T-cell leukemia.  Dr. Varmus is investigating the mouse
 mammary tumor gene INT-1, as well as the genetic code of HIV,
 the virus that causes acquired immune deficiency syndrome, or
 AIDS.  
    The lanky Dr. Varmus, who came to his Nobel news
 conference in jeans and running shoes, says that he'll also
 continue riding his bicycle to the lab.  "Some things," he
 said, "don't change."

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