Zur Hausen, Harald (1936-2023), a German scientist, shared the 2008 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine. Zur Hausen was a virologist, an expert in viruses and viral diseases. He received the prize for his discovery that a virus called the human papillomavirus (HPV) causes cervical cancer in women. He shared the prize with the French scientists Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier. Barré-Sinoussi and Montagnier were awarded the prize for their work with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
Cervical cancer is uncontrolled multiplication of cells in a woman’s cervix. The cervix includes the lower portion and opening of the uterus (womb). In the 1970’s, zur Hausen suspected that HPV might play a role in the development of cervical cancer. The virus has more than 100 types, including many that cause a variety of sexually transmitted diseases. After testing many varieties of HPV, zur Hausen isolated the two types most often found in tissue samples from cervical cancer patients. He was also able to help demonstrate how HPV caused changes in cells of the cervix that lead to cancer.
Today, medical experts think that HPV causes about 90 percent of all cervical cancers. Zur Hausen’s discovery eventually led to the development of vaccines to help prevent cervical cancer. The first vaccine was approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2006.
Zur Hausen was born in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, on March 11, 1936. He studied science at universities in Bonn and Hamburg. He received his medical degree at the University of Düsseldorf in 1960. He held several positions at German universities, and at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania in the United States. From 1983 until his retirement in 2003, he chaired the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg, Germany. Zur Hausen died on May 29, 2023.
