Renato DulbeccoDr. Renato Dulbecco is President Emeritus and Distinguished Resident Professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California. Known for his pioneering work in cancer-causing viruses, Dulbecco was awarded the Nobel Prize in mediine/physiology in 1975. At the beginning of his career, Dulbecco devoted his work to the study of virology. During his early research, he developed what continues to be the most widely used technique for growing and maintaining cells in culture and for measuring the activity of animal viruses, such as poliovirus. Subsequently, Dulbecco, working with cancer-producing viruses, was able to show how genes of the virus interact with those of the host cell in tissue culture, which was a fundamental discovery in understanding the uncontrolled proliferation of cells in the cancer process. Dulbecco was born and educated in Italy, and he received his doctorate of medicine from the University Turin in 1936. He joined the Salk Institute as one of the original group of Fellows in 1963 and was associated with the Institute until 1972. From 1972 through 1977, Dulbecco was Deputy Director of the Imperial Cancer Research Laboratory in London. Since rejoining the Salk Institute in 1977, he has held the position of Distinguished Research Professor and Senior Clayton Foundation Investigator. In 1988 he was named President of the Salk Institute. Dulbecco's more recent research has involved the study of the origin of breast cancer. He has studied the various cell types that comprise breast tissue, a necessary first step in the process of understanding how some cells undergo transformation and become malignant. Dulbecco has used monoclonal antibody techniques to study breast cancer in laboratory animals and in humans, with the objective of developing new and reliable means of classifying cells in the breast, and identifying those that may be susceptible to carcinogenic agents. Some of the antibodies he produced have been studied for clinical Read More Read Less