J. Michael Bishop

J. Michael Bishop shared the 1989 Nobel Prize with Harold Varmus for the discovery that retroviral oncogenes are derived from normal cellular genes — proto-oncogenes — that become aberrantly activated in cancer. At UCSF he made this discovery in collaboration with Varmus by demonstrating that the src oncogene of Rous sarcoma virus had a cellular homologue in normal chicken DNA. This work revolutionized cancer biology, revealing that cancer results from mutations in normal cellular genes, and launched the oncogene and tumor suppressor gene era of cancer research.