Michael Bishop and his colleagues established the cellular origins of a chicken retrovirus oncogene. Many cellular genes that usually govern growth and development and are commonly altered in human cancer were isolated as a result of this study. Bishop and Varmus won several honors for their work, including the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1989.
Varmus is well known for his research on retrovirus and hepatitis B virus replication cycles, the roles of cancer-related genes, and the creation of mice models of human cancer (the focus of much of the work in his laboratory at MSKCC).
Varmus was appointed Director of the National Institutes of Health by President Clinton in 1993, a post he maintained until the end of 1999.
During his time at the National Institutes of Health, he implemented several changes in the way intramural and extramural research projects were conducted; he recruited new leaders for most of the key posts at the Institute, and he designed three major buildings on the NIH campus.
Varmus stressed the need of leveraging breakthroughs in biological sciences to enhance cancer patient care at MSKCC. Under his leadership, the scientific programs were reorganized and expanded; a new research building, the Mortimer B.
Zuckerman Research Center, was built; and new graduate training programs in chemical biology and computational biology (as part of a new Tri-Institutional Research Program with Rockefeller University and Weill-Cornell Medical College) and cancer biology (as part of a new Tri-Institutional Research Program with Rockefeller University and Weill-Cornell Medical College) were established.
In addition, he oversaw the construction of new clinical facilities (for pediatrics, pathology, urology, and surgery) as well as new breast cancer treatment and imaging centers (the Evelyn H.
Lauder Breast Center and the MSKCC Imaging Center); the founding of a hospital-based translational research program (the Human Oncology and Pathogenesis Program Exit Disclaimer); and the development of a new breast cancer treatment and imaging center (the Evelyn H. Lauder Breast Center and the MSKCC.
From 2000 to 2002, he served on the World Health Organization's Commission on Macroeconomics and Health; he is a co-founder and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Public Library of Science, a publisher of open-access journals in the biomedical sciences; and from 2003 to 2008, he chaired the Scientific Board of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's Grand Challenges in Global Health.
He also served on the Empire State Stem Cell Board's Funding Committee and as co-chair of the Institute of Medicine's committee on The United States' Commitment to Global Health. In addition to the Nobel Prize, he has received the National Medal of Science, the Vannevar Bush Award, and several honorary degrees and other prizes.
He has been a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences Exit Disclaimer since 1984 and of the Institute of Medicine Exit Disclaimer since 1991. Varmus is the son of Dr. Frank Varmus, a general practitioner, and Beatrice Varmus, a mental social worker, and was born in Freeport, Long Island.
He studied English literature at Amherst College and received a master's degree in English from Harvard University after graduating from Freeport High School. He attended Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons and worked as a medical student at an Indian hospital before joining the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center's medical house staff.
He began his scientific career as a Public Health Service officer at the National Institutes of Health, where he investigated bacterial gene expression with Dr. Ira Pastan, and then as a post-doctoral researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, where he worked with Dr. Bishop. Constance Casey, a journalist and gardener, is his wife, and they have two boys.
