Flossie Wong-Staal was a Chinese-American virologist and molecular biologist.
19 Facts About Flossie Wong-Staal
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Flossie Wong-Staal was the first scientist to clone HIV and determine the function of its genes, which was a major step in proving that HIV is the cause of AIDS.
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Flossie Wong-Staal was co-founder and, after retiring from UCSD, she became the chief scientific officer of Immusol, which was renamed iTherX Pharmaceuticals in 2007 when it transitioned to a drug development company focused on hepatitis C and continued as chief scientific officer.
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Flossie Wong-Staal's teachers suggested she change her name to something in English.
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Flossie Wong-Staal's father chose the name "Flossie" for her after a massive typhoon that had struck Southeast Asia around this time.
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Flossie Wong-Staal conducted her postdoctoral work at the University of California, San Diego, where she continued to research.
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Two years later, Flossie Wong-Staal became the first researcher to clone HIV.
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Flossie Wong-Staal completed genetic mapping of the virus which made it possible to develop HIV tests.
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In 1990, Flossie Wong-Staal was recruited from NCI to the University of California, San Diego, where she started the Center for AIDS Research.
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Flossie Wong-Staal's research focused on gene therapy, using a ribozyme "molecular knife" to repress HIV in stem cells.
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In 1990 a team of researchers led by Flossie Wong-Staal studied the effects that the Tat protein within the viral strain HIV-1 would have on the growth of cells found within Kaposi's sarcoma lesions commonly found in AIDS patients.
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Flossie Wong-Staal used a type of cellular analysis known as radioimmunoprecipitation in order to detect the presence of KS lesions in cells with varying amounts of the Tat protein.
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In 1994, Flossie Wong-Staal was named as chairman of UCSD's newly created Center for AIDS Research.
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In that same year, Flossie Wong-Staal was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the US National Academies.
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In 2002, Flossie Wong-Staal retired from UCSD and accepted the title of professor emerita.
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Flossie Wong-Staal then joined Immusol, a biopharmaceutical company that she co-founded with her second husband, Jeffrey McKelvy, while she was at UCSD, as chief scientific officer.
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Flossie Wong-Staal remained as a research professor of medicine at UCSD until her death on July 8,2020.
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Flossie Wong-Staal later re-married to neurologist Jeffrey McKelvy, with whom she founded Immusol.
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Flossie Wong-Staal died on July 8,2020 at the age of 73, at Jacobs Medical Center in La Jolla, due to complications caused by pneumonia.