How J. Michael Bishop Changed Cancer Research and UCSF

J. Michael Bishop is an American scientist who worked at the University of California, San Francisco. He studied viruses that can change cells. He and Harold Varmus showed that cancer genes can come from normal cell genes. They called the normal forms proto‑oncogenes and this idea changed cancer research.

Bishop served as chancellor of UCSF from 1998 to 2009. He led the creation and first development of the Mission Bay campus and helped expand biomedical research space. Today many researchers build on his discoveries.