Richard Shope

Richard Edwin Shope (* December 25, 1901; † October 2, 1966 ) was an American virologist.

Life and work

Shope was the son of a doctor and studied medicine at the University of Iowa. After graduating in 1924 he taught as an instructor pharmacology. At that time, he dealt primarily with tuberculosis. From 1928 he was at the Rockefeller University (then called the Rockefeller Institute ) at its laboratories in Princeton, where he turned to the Virus Research. During World War II, he conducted research for the U.S. Army and U.S. Navy. From 1947 he was deputy director of the Merck Institute for Therapeutic Research. From 1952 he was at the Rockefeller University again, this time in New York City.

Shope succeeded first scheduling to isolate the influenza virus for the vaccination of animals against influenza. Shope examined a swine flu in the Midwest and first examined by a bacteria, which he found in the form of Haemophilus influenzae. But alone, but could the bacteria do not produce influenza in healthy pigs, probably a virus, he found. This caused a mild form of the disease, it has been amplified only by the presence of the bacterium.

Because even with the human flu occurred like bacteria and Shope also knew that when the great epidemic of 1918 pigs were infected, he concluded that was also causes human flu viruses. He found that survivors of the 1918 epidemic antibody against its swine flu had, but not to flu sufferers after the end of the epidemic 1920. He concluded that he examined swine flu was a remnant of the 1918 epidemic. Later this proved not entirely correct, only certain antigens were identical. With the methods of Shope then, a group to Wilson Smith, Patrick Laidlaw and Christopher Andrewes the isolation of human influenza virus ( 1933), they could be transferred to ferrets.

Shope also discovered relationships between viruses (in this case Papillomaviridae ) and tumors in rabbits. He found that viruses both a benign and a malignant tumor shape generated and vaccination against the virus of benign tumor variant immunity to the formation of malignant tumors at vaccination produced there with the viruses of malignant variant.

During the Second World War he developed with colleagues a vaccine against rinderpest and he also found the first indications of antiviral effects in an antibiotic.

In 1957 he was awarded the Albert Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research, and he received the Kober Medal of the Association of American Physicians and the U.S. Army Legion of Merit. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.