17 April 2008

Peter Garland Lecture 2008

Photo opportunity - 5pm, Tuesday April 22nd
Wellcome Trust Building
Dr. Varmus and winners of the College of of Life Sciences Howard Elder Prize for Cancer Research 2008.

Harold Varmus - President of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and the 1989 Nobel Prize winner for Physiology or Medicine will deliver the 24th Peter Garland Lecture at the University of Dundee on April 22nd.

The Peter Garland Lecture is the College of Life Sciences' most prestigious lecture. Peter Garland was the first Professor of Biochemistry in Dundee and under his leadership from 1970-1984 it became the UK’s strongest life sciences department

This year’s speaker is Harold Varmus, the President and CEO of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1989 for his discovery of the cellular origin of retroviral oncogenes, and from 1993-1999 was the Director of the US National Institutes of Health.

His lecture is titled ‘The New Era in Cancer Research’.

Harold Varmus' seminal work on oncogenes was carried out in collaboration with Michael Bishop over a 23 year period when he was a faculty member in the Medical School of the University of California at San Francisco. This discovery led to the isolation of many cellular genes that normally control growth and development and are frequently mutated in human cancer. Harold Varmus has also made major contributions to our understanding of the replication cycles of retroviruses and hepatitis B viruses and the development of mouse models of human cancer which is the focus of much of his current research at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.

Harold Varmus has published over 300 scientific papers and written four books, including an introduction to the genetic basis of cancer for the general public. He served on the World Health Organization's Commission on Macroeconomics and Health from 2000 to 2002; is a co-founder and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Public Library of Science. He also Chairs the Scientific Board of the Grand Challenges in Global Health at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and is involved in initiatives to promote science in developing countries, including the Global Science Corps, through the Science Initiatives Group. He was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences in1984, has received the US National Medal of Science, the Vannevar Bush Award, and several other prizes, in addition to the Nobel Prize.

Born in Freeport, Long Island, Harold Varmus obtained a Bachelor’s degree in English literature at Amherst College and a master's degree in English at Harvard University. He then obtained a medical degree at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons, which included a period working in a hospital in India. His entry into scientific research started when he became a Public Health Service officer at the National Institutes of Health, where he studied bacterial gene expression in Ira Pastan’s laboratory. He then joined Michael Bishop’s laboratory at the University of California a postdoctoral fellow, staying on there as a faculty member where his collaboration with Bishop led to the discovery of oncogenes. He is married to Constance Casey, a journalist and horticulturist; their two sons, Jacob and Christopher, also live in New York City.

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Roddy Isles
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University of Dundee
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