Researcher

Harold Varmus

Profile

Harold Varmus is an American virologist and oncologist at Weill Cornell Medicine and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center who shared the 1989 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with J. Michael Bishop for the discovery that normal cellular genes (proto-oncogenes) can be transformed into cancer-causing oncogenes. Working with Bishop at UCSF, Varmus demonstrated that the src oncogene carried by Rous sarcoma virus originated as a normal cellular gene (c-src) present in all vertebrate genomes, not as an exogenous viral gene as previously thought. This paradigm shift—that cancer arises from mutations to our own genes—transformed oncology and launched the era of targeted cancer therapy. Varmus also served as Director of the National Institutes of Health (1993–1999) and National Cancer Institute (2010–2015), shaping science policy at the highest levels. The proto-oncogene framework he established is the conceptual foundation for nearly all modern targeted cancer drugs, including tyrosine kinase inhibitors like imatinib (Gleevec). Pharmaceutical companies developing oncology pipelines operate squarely within the paradigm Varmus and Bishop created.

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