Zur Hausen was born inGelsenkirchen[1] in a Catholic family. He completed hisAbitur at Antonianum Grammar School inVechta, then studied medicine at the universities ofBonn from 1955,Hamburg from 1957, andDüsseldorf from 1958, and received aDoctor of Medicine degree there in 1960.[1] He pursued internships inWimbern,Isny, Gelsenkirchen, and Düsseldorf, qualifying as a physician in 1962.[1]
He joined the Institute for Microbiology at the University of Düsseldorf as a laboratory assistant in 1962.[1] After three and a half years there, he moved toPhiladelphia to work at the Virus Laboratories ofChildren's Hospital of Philadelphia together with eminent virologistsWerner and Gertrude Henle,[2] who had escaped from Nazi Germany. In 1967, he contributed to a ground-breaking study that for the first time proved a virus (Epstein–Barr virus) can turn healthy cells (lymphocytes) into cancer cells.[3][4] He became an assistant professor at theUniversity of Pennsylvania in 1968.[1] In 1969, he returned to Germany to become a regular teaching and researching professor at theUniversity of Würzburg's Institute for Virology. In 1972, he moved to theUniversity of Erlangen–Nuremberg. In 1977, he moved on to theUniversity of Freiburg (Breisgau), where he headed the Department of Virology and Hygiene.[1]
Working withLutz Gissmann, zur Hausen first isolated human papillomavirus 6 by simple centrifugation fromgenital warts.[5] He isolated HPV 6 DNA from genital warts, suggesting a possible new way of identifying viruses in human tumours. This discovery paid off several years later, in 1983, when zur Hausen identified HPV 16 DNA incervical cancer tumours by means ofSouthern blot hybridization.[6] This was followed by the discovery of HPV18 a year later,[7] thus identifying the causes of approximately 75% of human cervical cancer. The announcement of his breakthrough sparked a major scientific controversy.[8]
Zur Hausen's field of research was the study ofoncoviruses. In 1976, he hypothesised thathuman papillomavirus plays an important role in causingcervical cancer. Together with his collaborators, he then identified HPV16 and HPV18 in cervical cancers in 1983–84. This research made possible the development of theHPV vaccine, the first formulation of which was commercialised in 2006. He is also credited with discovery of the virus causinggenital warts (HPV 6) and a monkey lymphotropic polyomavirus that is a close relative to a recently discovered humanMerkel cell polyomavirus, as well as of techniques to immortalise cells with Epstein–Barr virus and to induce replication of the virus using phorbol esters. His work on papillomaviruses and cervical cancer received a great deal of scientific criticism when first published but subsequently was confirmed and was used as the basis for research on other high-risk papillomaviruses.[8]
The award of the 2008 Nobel Prize to zur Hausen became controversial following the revelation that Bo Angelin, a member of the Nobel Assembly that year, also sat on the board ofAstraZeneca, a company that earnspatent royalties for HPV vaccines.[14] The controversy was exacerbated by the fact that AstraZeneca had also entered into a partnership with Nobel Web and Nobel Media to sponsor documentaries and lectures to increase awareness of the prize.[14] However, colleagues widely felt that the award was deserved,[15] and the secretary of the Nobel Committee and Assembly issued a statement affirming that Bo Angelin was unaware of AstraZeneca's HPV vaccine patents at the time of the vote.[14]
Zur Hausen had three sons from his first marriage, Jan Dirk, Axel and Gerrit. In 1993, he marriedEthel-Michele de Villiers,[1] who at the time was a fellow researcher at theGerman Cancer Research Center, and who in prior years had co-authored many research journal articles with zur Hausen on papilloma virus and genital cancer, dating as far back as 1981.[5][4] He acknowledged her research contributions and support in his Nobel Prize biography.[16]
Zur Hausen received almost 40 honorary doctorates and numerous honorary professorships,[9][18] including degrees from the universities of Chicago, Umeå, Prague, Salford, Helsinki, Erlangen-Nuremberg, Ferrara, Guadalajara and Sal.[41]
^Henle, Werner (1 September 1967). "Herpes-Type Virus and Chromosome Marker in Normal Leukocytes after Growth with Irradiated Burkitt Cells | Science".Science.157 (3792):1064–1065.doi:10.1126/science.157.3792.1064.PMID6036237.S2CID30764560.
^ab"The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2008". Nobelprize.org. 6 October 2008. Retrieved6 October 2008. 2008 Nobel Prize winner "for his discovery of human papilloma viruses causing cervical cancer"
"Harald zur Hausen".science-connections.com (in German). Retrieved2 June 2023. (interview, CV, publications)
Cornwall, Claudia Maria (2013).Catching Cancer: The Quest for its Viral and Bacterial Causes. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.ISBN978-1-4422-1522-1.OCLC834582359.
Morgan, Gregory J (2022). "Planned Practical Playoffs: Harald zur Hausen, Jian Zhou, Ian Frazer, Douglas Lowy, John Schiller, HPV, and the Cervical Cancer Vaccine".Cancer Virus Hunters: A History of Tumor Virology. Baltimore:Johns Hopkins University Press.ISBN9781421444017.OCLC1276804549.
