George Kuo

George Ching-Hung Kuo is a Taiwanese-born scientist, who along with Michael Houghton, Qui-Lim Choo and Daniel W. Bradley, co-discovered and cloned the hepatitis C virus in 1989.[1][2]

George Kuo
Alma materNational Taiwan University
Albert Einstein College of Medicine (PhD)
Known forHepatitis C
AwardsKarl Landsteiner Memorial Award (1992)
William Beaumont Prize (1994)
Dale A. Smith Memorial Award (2005)
Scientific career
FieldsVirology
InstitutionsChiron Corporation

Kuo graduated from the National Taiwan University in 1961 and completed his PhD in molecular biology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 1972.[3]

Following the discovery of Hepatitis C at Chiron Corporation, Kuo, who was working in a lab next door to Michael Houghton's, designed a test that could screen blood for the infection, and in 1988 Hirohito was the first person to receive blood that had been screened by Kuo's method.[4] The United States would go on to license the testing technique in 1990. The development of diagnostic reagents to detect HCV in blood supplies has reduced the risk of acquiring HCV through blood transfusion from one in three to about one in two million.[5][6]

He was awarded the Karl Landsteiner Memorial Award (1992) and Dale A. Smith Memorial Award (2005) of the American Association of Blood Banks, and the William Beaumont Prize of the American Gastroenterological Association in 1994.[7][8]

Personal life

His wife is Carol Lan-Fang Kuo, who also worked for the Chiron Corporation in Emeryville, California. Together they worked on developing vaccines and blood-testing procedures for hepatitis C. They have a daughter, Irene Carol, a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of California, San Francisco, an associate professor of ophthalmology[9] at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, and a specialist in cornea and refractive surgery at the Wilmer Eye Institute.[10]

References
  1. Choo QL, Kuo G, Weiner AJ, Overby LR, Bradley DW, Houghton M (April 1989). "Isolation of a cDNA clone derived from a blood-borne non-A, non-B viral hepatitis genome". Science. 244 (4902): 359–62. Bibcode:1989Sci...244..359C. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.469.3592. doi:10.1126/science.2523562. PMID 2523562.
  2. "Out of the Shadows - Proto Magazine - Massachusetts General Hospital". protomag.com. Archived from the original on 2014-04-07. Retrieved 2014-04-04.
  3. Boyer, J.L; Blum, H.E; Maier, K.P; Sauerbruch, T.; Stalder, G.A (2001-03-31). Liver Cirrhosis and Its Development - Google Books. ISBN 9780792387602. Retrieved 2014-01-12.
  4. "The unsung heroes of the Nobel-winning hepatitis C discovery". Nature. Retrieved 26 October 2020.
  5. "Opinion: Nobel-worthy discovery right in our backyard". Canadian for Health Research. Retrieved 4 September 2016.
  6. "Science world abuzz as virologist turns down Gairdner award". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved 10 September 2016.
  7. "List of Past AABB Award Recipients". AABB. Retrieved 4 October 2016.
  8. "William Beaumont Prize". American Gastroenterological Association. Retrieved 4 October 2016.
  9. "Irene C Kuo, M.D., Associate Professor of Ophthalmology". Johns Hopkins Medicine. Retrieved 2020-10-05.
  10. "Dr. Irene Kuo and Dr. Carson Chow". The New York Times. 2005-04-24. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-10-05.


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