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Jun 6, 20222 min read

Virologist & Molecular Biologist: Flossie Wong-Staal

By Rachel Chin '23

Herald as #32 of the"Top 100 Living Geniuses." - The Daily Telegraph (2007)
Flossie Wong-Staal, whose birth name was Yee Ching Wong, was a Chinese-American virologist and molecular biologist.

Born on August 27, 1946, in Guangzhou China, Wong-Staal immigrated to the United States at age 18, officially westernizing her name to Flossie Wong-Staal. She graduated from the University of California Los Angeles earning both her bachelor's degree in bacteriology (1968) and Ph.D. in molecular biology (1972), becoming the first person in her family to attend college. After graduating, Wong-Staal joined the Laboratory of Tumor Cell Biology at the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Her time at NIH sparked her interest in retroviruses, namely HIV, and the potential threat it posed as a pathogen in the human body.


By 1982, Wong-Staal was the section chief of NCI Laboratory of Tumor Cell Biology. During this time, HIV was first discovered and investigated by scientists. Wong-Staal contributed significantly to the development of understanding of HIV and AIDS. She was the first person to successfully clone HIV and determine the function of its genes including molecular evidence of micro-variation in HIV. Her findings were the key to the medical world's understanding that AIDS developed from HIV. In addition to her studies in HIV, she also found an interest in the molecular virology of HTLV-1 (leukemia). In 1990, Wong-Staal became the Gifford Chair in AIDS Research and Professorship in the Departments of Biology and Medicine at the University of California San Diego (UCSD), then the co-Director of the Center of AIDS for Research at UCSD.


Wong-Staal died on July 8, 2020, from a pneumonia infection at the age of 73. Wong-Staal's research played a big role in our current understanding of HIV and other retroviral diseases. She was named one of the 50 most important women in science by Discover magazine in 2002 and inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 2019, along with many other honors and awards. Wong-Staal gained respect and recognition as a woman in her field of predominantly men and made an impactful discovery that contributed to our understanding of HIV today.


 

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