Yuan Chang

Yuan Chang ( born November 17, 1959 in Taipei, Taiwan ) is a Chinese -born American virologist and pathologist. She is the co- discoverer of two cancer viruses in humans.

Chang moved as a child to the United States and grew up in Salt Lake City, where she studied medicine at the University of Utah ( MD degree ). At Stanford University, she dealt with Dikran Houroupian with neuropathology and then went to Columbia University, where she initially worked on the genetics of brain tumors.

There she discovered her husband Patrick S. Moore 1994 KSHV ( Kaposi 's sarcoma -associated herpesvirus, also human herpesvirus 8, HHV -8). They showed that the virus causes Kaposi's sarcoma and lymphoma serous body cavities (primary effusion lymphoma ). Chang also sequenced the viral genome, which enabled the development of tests and the discovery of proteins that play a role in cancer causation by the virus.

With a developed in their laboratory method for detection of new human tumor virus (Digital Transcriptome Subtraction, DTS) found Moore and Chang Feng and Masahiro Shuda Huichen with another human tumor virus, the Merkel cell polyomavirus as a probable cause of Merkel cell carcinoma. She is American Cancer Society Professor of Pathology at the University of Pittsburgh.

With Moore it received the 1998 Robert Koch Prize and both received the Charles S. Mott Prize for Cancer Research from General Motors. She received the Sloan -Kettering Paul Marks Prize for Cancer Research, the Carnegie Science Award, the Award of Excellence in Science and Technology of the New York mayor and the Meyenburg Award (1997).