Researcher

J. Michael Bishop

Profile

J. Michael Bishop is an American virologist and oncologist at the University of California San Francisco who shared the 1989 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Harold Varmus for discovering that normal cellular genes (proto-oncogenes) can become cancer-causing oncogenes. Bishop's work focused on the Rous sarcoma virus and the identification of the cellular origin of the viral src oncogene, demonstrating that cancer-causing genes are mutated versions of normal regulatory genes already present in the genome. This discovery fundamentally changed the conceptual framework of oncology: cancer is not caused by foreign agents but by dysregulation of the cell's own growth control machinery. Bishop served as Chancellor of UCSF and has been a prominent science advocate. The oncogene concept he established is the foundation of modern precision oncology. Virtually all targeted anticancer agents—from EGFR inhibitors to BRAF inhibitors to CDK inhibitors—are drugs that target proteins encoded by proto-oncogenes or their downstream effectors. His work thus underpins the entire rational drug design strategy in oncology today.

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