Monthly Archives: July 2013

Mario Rizzetto qualified in medicine and surgery from the University of Padova in 1969. He completed his internship in medicine at the University of Torino, and subsequently completed a research fellowship in immunology at Middlesex Hospital School of Medicine in London. Professor Rizzetto was a visiting researcher at the Laboratory for Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health from 1978 to 1979. He served for three years as Assistant Professor of Gastroenterology at Mauriziano Hospital in Torino, then as a Visiting Scientist at the Infectious Diseases Laboratory in the Hepatitis Section of the US National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD. He was a Professor of Gastroenterology at the University of Torino San Giovanni Battista University Hospital until his retirement in 2015.

Professor Rizzetto’s seminal contributions to hepatitis research culminated in his discovery – in 1977 – of the delta antigen (now known as hepatitis delta virus or HDV) and the elucidation of its role in fulminant and chronic hepatitis. The delta agent, which replicates only in the presence of the hepatitis B virus, had bewildered hepatitis researchers for many years. Its discovery was a major breakthrough that quickly amassed clinical, epidemiological and immunologic data characterizing the new agent.

Professor Rizzetto received several honors for his work in hepatology and gastroenterology. He is a member of many professional associations, including the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases and the International Association for the Study of the Liver. He served as an advisor to several committees as a result of his expertise on hepatitis and infectious diseases, including the World Health Organization and the Hepatitis Foundation International. In addition to serving on the editorial boards of many journals, Professor Rizzetto contributed extensively to the medical literature through his numerous publications in leading journals such as The Lancet, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

This biography was written in the year the prize was awarded.

Michael Field obtained his B.A. in English Literature from the University of Chicago in 1953 and an MD from Boston University in 1959. After completing his training in internal medicine and gastroenterology, he assumed several positions at universities and medical centers in the United States. He joined the Biophysical Laboratory at Harvard Medical School as a postdoctoral fellow looking into intracellular mechanisms in 1964. He had been Professor of the department of Pharmacological and Physiological Sciences at the University of Chicago since 1977. 

Professor Field took the concepts of basic sciences to the bedside of those afflicted with diarrhea and developed effective measures to prevent consequent debility and death. He also contributed significantly to studies elucidating the chemical mechanisms by which cholera and other pathogenic bacteria toxins cause diarrhea by stimulating the intestine to secrete excessive amounts of salt instead of absorbing it. Working in collaboration with Professor William Greenough III of Johns Hopkins University, they were able to show that cholera toxins increased adenylate cyclase activity and the secretion of adenosine monophosphate, leading to increased loss of fluids and ions through the intestinal mucous membrane. They also discovered two of the toxins produced by Escherichia coli and conducted studies on the hormonal relations associated with intestinal functions. This work stimulated rigorous research worldwide on the secretory mechanisms of the intestine and the pathogenesis of diarrhea and led to the development of new drugs for treating bacterial diarrheas and reducing their complications.

Professor Michael Field received several awards, including the Distinguished Achievement Award and the Distinguished Mentor Award of the AGA in 1984. He was the editor of Diarrheal Diseases; Current Topics in Gastroenterology (New York Elsevier) and a member of the American Physiological Society, the American Gastroenterological Association, the American Society of Clinical Investigation, and the Association of American Physicians.

This biography was written in the year the prize was awarded.

William Greenough III received his B.A. from Amherst College in Massachusetts in 1953 and an MD from Harvard Medical School in 1957. He completed post-graduate training at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University, and the National Cancer Institute and Peter Bent Brigham Hospital. He is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians.

Professor Greenough held several prominent positions and consultancies at different research centers, institutions and hospitals in the United States and overseas, including: the National Heart Institute and the National Institutes of Health, Baltimore City Hospitals, Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, Perry Point Veterans Administration and Bangladesh Information Center. He has been teaching at Johns Hopkins University since 1967 and is currently a Professor of Medicine, a Professor of Microbiology at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and an Associate Professor in the department of Health Care Organization at Bloomberg School of Hygiene and Public Health at Johns Hopkins Medical Center at Bay View, MD. He is also a faculty member of the Division of Geriatrics and Gerontology and Consultant at the Burn Center in Johns Hopkins medical center. Professor Greenough founded and directed research on diarrheal diseases in Bangladesh and was the Scientific Director of the Cholera Research Laboratory. He is currently the Director of the International Center for Diarrheal Disease Research in Dhaka, Bangladesh. He also served as President of Bangladesh Foundation in Washington since 1971.

Professor Greenough conducted seminal studies – jointly with Professor Michael Field – on the etiology, pathogenesis and pathophysiology of diarrheal diseases, the influence of these diseases on salt and water balance in the human body and their treatment and control. His contributions were published in more than 200 scientific papers, review articles, conference papers, abstracts, and 43 book chapters. He also edited ten books and conference proceedings, and served as editor-in chief, founding editor or associate editor of many scientific and medical journals. He is also a fellow or member of 14 medical societies.

Professor Greenough received the UNICEF Gold Medal for East Asia and Pakistan in 1983 and the UNICEF International Maurice Pate Prize in 1984. He also served as an invited lecturer at numerous universities and research institutions.

This biography was written in the year the prize was awarded.

Richard Doll graduated from St. Thomas’s Hospital Medical School in 1937 and received an M.D. in 1945 and a D.Sc. in 1958 from London, and a D.M. in 1969 from Oxford University. In 1969, he became a Regius Professor of Medicine, the most senior medical position at Oxford University. He held this position until 1979, when he became the founding Warden of Green College. He also served as a Director of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund’s Epidemiology and Clinical Trials Service Unit (CTSU) at Oxford, where he later became an Honorary Member of CTSU.

Sir Richard Doll was one of the greatest cancer epidemiologists. His 1950 and 1951 papers with Bradford Hill were two of several papers published around that time about an association between smoking and cancer risk. The association was not proof of causality and many in the medical profession and the public doubted the existence of a real link. Doll’s next, extraordinary contribution was to initiate a 50 year long cohort follow-up study of about 40,000 British doctors, which examined cancer risk in relation to various aspects of smoking (duration in years, numbers of cigarettes, etc). The first results of that study were published in 1954; the latest in 2004, marking the exact 50th anniversary of the first publication. The study provided indisputable evidence that cigarette smoking itself (or the tar inhaled therefore) was quantitatively linked to the risk of lung cancer. The causal link was heavily endorsed by a large body of molecular biological data showing that particular chemicals in cigarette tar damage DNA and cause mutations.

For a period of more than 30 years, Sir Richard worked in collaboration with his protégé and colleague at Oxford Professor Sir Richard Peto, on both the 50 year cohort study and to document the worldwide disease burden from tobacco consumption. They showed that annual mortality worldwide from tobacco-related deaths from lung and other cancers and heart disease was truly staggering, around 3 million and rising, with additional morbidity to other organs and the developing fetus. Their worldwide death estimates caused by tobacco smoking were 100 million in the 20th century and could be up to one billion in the present century if no efforts are made to curtail smoking drastically. 

Sir Richard Doll brought to this field of medical research an unusual mix of his medical training with the rigor of mathematics and statistics. His persistence with a major health problem for 50 years, often in the face of hostile criticism, was unique. He received numerous honorary degrees and awards. He was a distinguished fellow of the Royal Society and received a knighthood for his services to medicine in 1971. In 1996, he was made a Companion of Honor in recognition of his outstanding achievements. Sir Richard is unique in having witnessed both global acceptance of his work demonstrating smoking as the main source of one of the most fatal cancers in the world, and the relative success of strategies to reduce the prevalence of smoking.

This biography was written in the year the prize was awarded.

Richard Peto studied natural sciences at Cambridge University and statistics at the University of London. After working for two years at the MRC Statistical Research Unit in London, he moved with Professor Sir Richard Doll in 1969 to Oxford. He is currently a Professor of Medical Statistics and Epidemiology and a Co-Director of the Clinical Trial Service Unit (CTSU) at Oxford.

Professor Sir Richard Peto is one of the world’s leading epidemiologists. His work included studies of the causes of cancer in general, and of the effects of smoking in particular. He helped establish large-scale randomized trials of the treatment of cardiovascular diseases, stroke, breast cancer and other conditions and his work was instrumental in introducing combined ‘meta-analysis’ of results from clinical trials. For more than 30 years, he worked alongside Professor Doll on elucidating the detrimental effects of tobacco. Together, they made the best known and the most consistently productive tobacco epidemiologists in the world. Their scientific contribution to this field was matched only by their ability to communicate their results with simple and effective messages that the public can understand.

In addition to his partnership with Doll in the cohort study on British doctors, Professor Sir Richard Peto initiated a series of very large studies of tobacco, blood pressure, obesity, and death in China, India, Cuba, Egypt, and Mexico. These studies, which involved retrospective investigations of the smoking habits of more than a million dead people and interviews with more than two million people, clearly showed that tobacco was already causing even more deaths in developing countries than in developed countries and that the health risks of smoking will continue to rise. Peto’s landmark study with Alan Lopez (WHO, Geneva) concluded that about one billion people were likely to die of conditions associated with tobacco in the 21st Century if current smoking patterns persisted. In recent years, Peto extended his research to reveal the beneficial effects of smoking cessation. His ongoing international studies are having a major impact on health policies internationally.

Professor Peto published hundreds of papers and reviews in leading scientific journals and conference proceedings. His scholarship is widely recognized; he received numerous other prizes, honorary degrees, fellowships, visiting professorships, named lectureships, and memberships of academic institutions and learned societies both in the U.K. and abroad. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1999 for his services to epidemiology and cancer prevention.

This biography was written in the year the prize was awarded.