Nobel laureate Dr. Harold Varmus, director of the National Institutes of Health NIH , will present a lecture as the Jonathan Edwards College JE Tetelman Fellow on Monday, March 3, at noon in the School of Medicine's Harkness Auditorium, 333 Cedar St. He will speak on the topic "Mice Genes and Cancer." At 3:30 p.m. that day Dr. Varmus will be the guest at a tea at the JE master's house, 68 High St. Both events are free and open to the public.
In addition, members of the Yale community are invited to have lunch with Dr. Varmus before the master's tea, at 1:30 p.m., in the JE senior common room. Those who wish to attend should sign up in advance at the JE master's office.
Dr. Varmus is an internationally recognized authority on retroviruses and the genetic basis of cancer. He has held the NIH directorship since November of 1993, the first Nobel laureate to serve in that capacity. He was previously professor of microbiology, biochemistry and biophysics, and the American Cancer Society Professor of Molecular Virology at the University of California, San Francisco UCSF.
Dr. Varmus and his UCSF colleague Dr. J. Michael Bishop shared the 1989 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for demonstrating that cancer genes oncogenes can arise from normal cellular genes, called proto-oncogenes. In recent years Dr. Varmus' work has assumed special relevance to breast cancer, through investigation of mammary tumors in mice, and to acquired immune deficiency syndrome AIDS , through a focus on biochemical properties of the human inmmunodeficiency virus HIV . In 1986 he chaired the subcommittee of the International Committee on the Taxonomy of Viruses that gave the AIDS virus its name: HIV.
Dr. Varmus has served on a variety of review and advisory boards for government agencies, scientific organizations and private companies, and also has shared his expertise with such bodies as the Board of Biology for the National Research Council, which he chaired, and the Congressional Caucus for Biomedical Research, for which he served as adviser. He is author or editor of over 300 scientific papers and four books, the most recent of which is "Genes and the Biology of Cancer," coauthored with Robert Weinberg and geared towards a general audience. He also is editor of several professional journals. Dr. Varmus has been elected to the Institute of Medicine, the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
The Tetelman Fellowship at Yale was endowed in 1979 by Damon Wells of the Class of 1958 in memory of his friend and classmate, Alan S. Tetelman, who died in a plane crash in 1978. The fellowship honors distinguished individuals who have made a significant contribution to science.