“It was dizzying, you know, because there was so much to do. You don’t even know what to do first… those years were the highlight of my career, that period of discovery, intense discovery.” Dr. Flossie-Wong Staal
Dr. Flossie Wong-Staal was a groundbreaking scientist and the first person to clone HIV and figure out its genetic coding, leading to tests and therapies that have saved millions of lives.
Immigrating from China to Hong Kong to the US
Yee Ching Wong (she changed her first name to Flossie) was born in China in 1946, the third of four children. When she was six years old, her family moved to Hong Kong to escape the Communist Revolution. Early on, she showed an impressive scholastic aptitude and her family encouraged her to pursue higher education in the United States.
When she was 18, she moved to Los Angeles, where she earned her bachelor’s degree in biology and her Ph.D. in molecular biology from UCLA.
In 1973, she joined the National Cancer Institute, a department of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), in Washington, D.C., and continued her molecular biology research, focusing on retroviruses. Unlike other viruses, retroviruses invade the nucleus of a cell and insert their genes into the DNA of the cell, changing it. Retroviruses were thought only to exist in animals but her team soon discovered that retroviruses could also live in humans.
“At that time, the dogma was that they [retroviruses in humans] did not exist,” Flossie explained in an interview at the NIH. “Most of the retrovirus work was done in the murine system and in the avian system, where there are very high levels of virus replication. At the same time, people who were looking for human retroviruses had some mishaps. I mean that there were a few so-called “discoveries” that turned out to be [the result of] contamination, artifacts, whatever. This soured people on the concept that human retroviruses even existed. If they existed, then it should have been easy or obvious to find them by now.”
Discovering Human Retroviruses and Cloning HIV
Despite doubt in the scientific community, Flossie and her team continued their research and eventually, they had a breakthrough.
They discovered that the HTLV-1 virus (human T-cell lymphotropic virus type 1) could live and multiply in humans.
“HTLV-1 (human T-cell lymphotropic virus type 1) was the first human retrovirus to be discovered,” Flossie explained. “Once that virus was isolated and propagated, then my group got a chance to work on cloning it and doing some of the sequencing.”
While Flossie focused her research on HTLV-1 at first, it was another virus that would hold her focus for decades to come. One day, in the early 1980s, a sample arrived in the lab from a patient who had both HTLV-1 and HIV (human immunodeficiency virus).
Flossie then shifted her focus to HIV and eventually, and much study, she cloned HIV–becoming the first person to do so–and she figured out its genetic coding and created a genetic map of the virus.
Thanks to her groundbreaking work, scientists were then able to link HIV as the cause of AIDS, and from there, tests and therapies were created that have saved millions of lives.
As the HIV/AIDS epidemic spread across the United States and worldwide in the 1980s, the pressure on Flossie and her team grew.
“I think the biggest change with AIDS was that suddenly, the research that we did caught the attention of the public, because prior to that, no one cared about oncogenes, particularly if it was a yeast gene or a regulatory mechanism,” Flossie explained. “We were under the microscope all the time, and people had undue expectations. The pressure was always on. When will there be a cure? When will there be a vaccine? What’s next?”
With mounting pressure and media attention, the team began to disband and eventually Flossie left the NIH to pursue HIV and AIDS research in academia.
Academic Research Into HIV and AIDS
In 1990, Flossie became the Florence Riford Chair in AIDS Research at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), where she continued her HIV and AIDS research for several years. Eventually, she joined the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Center for AIDS Research program—also based at UCSD—as its Director and she continued her research until the early 2000s. After she left UCSD, she became Vice President of Immusol, where she focused the company’s attention on developing drugs to fight Hepatitis C.
In 2019, Flossie was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame. In her acceptance speech, she said, “When I came over to this country to attend college at UCLA, I was, of course, very excited but also very scared. I was wondering if I did the right thing in leaving home. Would I fit in? Would I be accepted? The United States is a country of immigrants. People of diverse ethnic origins are warmly welcomed into its fold. I’m proud of the strong core values that the majority of the people of my adopted country hold, and I feel very blessed to be part of it.”
Dr. Flossie Wong-Staal died at the age of 73, but her dedication to science and her amazing scientific discoveries laid the groundwork for medicines that will continue to save countless lives for generations to come.
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