An American scientist named Harold E. Varmus shared the 1989 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Together with J. Michael Bishop, he identified the cellular source of retroviral oncogenes and created a novel explanation for the cause of cancer, which postulates that some of our own healthy genes become mutated to cause the disease. The researchers also discovered that the genes that are vulnerable to these mutations are closely related to genes identified in a variety of viruses that cause cancer. He was expected to carry on his father’s medical practice as he was born the doctor’s son. Varmus, however, had a stronger interest in literature as a young man and eventually attended Harvard University to obtain a doctorate degree in English. He changed his mind, though, and enrolled in the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, where he graduated with his MD in 1966. He first encountered laboratory science when he joined the National Institutes of Health’s Public Health Service and worked there as Ira Pastan’s research assistant. Later, with funding from the California Division of the American Cancer Society, he started post-doctoral research under Michael Bishop at the University of California, San Francisco. His research with Bishop resulted in numerous important medical advancements that are crucial to the understanding of cancer-causing viruses.
Early Childhood & Life
On December 18, 1939, Harold Eliot Varmus was born in Oceanside, New York, to Jewish parents who were descended from immigrants who came to the United States from Poland and Austria around the turn of the century. His mother Beatrice worked in social services, while his father Frank Varmus was a doctor.
In 1957, he received his high school diploma from Freeport High School. He had a strong passion for reading and writing as a child and had dreams of becoming a literature professor. In response to this dream, he studied Anglo-Saxon and metaphysical poetry for his MA in English at Harvard University in 1962.
He changed his mind and opted to pursue medical studies after receiving an English degree. He applied to Harvard Medical School but was turned down, and in 1962 he was admitted to the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University in New York. In addition to a three-month internship in a hospital in northern India, he completed his MD in 1966.
Harold Varmus’s Career
From 1966 to 1968, Varmus served as a medical house officer at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital. He then joined the National Institutes of Health’s Public Health Service, where he worked as a Clinical Associate in Ira Pastan’s lab.
In the lab of J. Michael Bishop at the University of California, San Francisco, he started postdoctoral work in 1970. Soon after, he was promoted to Lecturer, and in 1972, the university’s Department of Microbiology and Immunology accepted him as a regular member of the faculty.
Bishop and Varmus led a research team that made numerous significant discoveries about viruses that cause cancer in the 1970s and 1980s. The researchers showed that normal, uninfected cells from a variety of species, including humans, contain virtually identical variants of the cancer-causing genes (oncogenes) carried by retroviruses.
Varmus steadily advanced through the UCSF ranks, earning the titles of professor in 1979 and research professor for the American Cancer Society in 1984. His joint work with Bishop shed insight into the operation of retroviruses and made a significant contribution to our understanding of cancer cells.
The discovery of the cellular gene (c-src) that gave rise to the v-src oncogene of the Rous Sarcoma Virus, a cancer-causing virus that was initially discovered from a chicken sarcoma in 1910, was one of Varmus and Bishop’s greatest accomplishments. The pair received the 1989 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in recognition of their contributions.
President Bill Clinton proposed Varmus in 1993 for the position of director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Maryland’s leading center for biomedical research and funding. In this role, he reinforced the organization’s dedication to the study of certain illnesses, most notably AIDS, and contributed to the near doubling of the research agency’s budget.
In 1999, he left the National Institutes of Health to take the helm of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. He contributed to the center’s basic research and instructional program expansion and strengthened the collaboration ties between Weill-Cornell Medical College and Rockefeller University, two nearby research institutions. He oversaw a tiny lab where he conducted his cancer research during his ten years there.
Together with two collaborators, Michael Eisen from UC Berkeley and Patrick Brown from Stanford, Varmus founded the Public Library of Science (PLOS), a non-profit publisher of a number of open-access publications in the biomedical sciences. In October 2003, it introduced “PLOS Biology,” its debut journal. Additionally, Varmus has written five books and more than 300 scientific papers.
In 2010, he returned to the NIH as the National Cancer Institute’s head (NCI). He left NCI in March 2015 and moved back to New York to work as a Senior Associate at the New York Genome Center and the Lewis Thomas University Professor of Medicine at Weill-Cornell Medical College.
Harold’s Bigger Works
In their groundbreaking work on cancer, Harold E. Varmus and J. Michael Bishop are credited with identifying the biological source of retroviral oncogenes. Their research into the cancer-causing genes (oncogenes) carried by retroviruses shed new light on a number of previously unsolved cancer-related mysteries.
Recognition & Achievements
In 1982, Harold E. Varmus and J. Michael Bishop split the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award.
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was given to Varmus and Bishop in 1989 “for their discovery of the cellular origin of retroviral oncogenes.”
In 2001, the Vannevar Bush Award was given to Varmus.
Personal Legacy & Life
Varmus wed Constance Casey, a writer and book critic, in 1969. Christopher and Jacob are their two sons.
Estimated Net Worth
One of the wealthiest and most well-known virologists is Harold E. Varmus. According to our research, Harold E. Varmus has a net worth of $5 million, as reported by Forbes, Wikipedia, and Business Insider.