George Kuo
George Ching-Hung Kuo is a Taiwanese-born scientist, who along with Michael Houghton, Qui-Lim Choo and Daniel W. Bradley, co-discovered and cloned the hepatitis C virus in 1989.
George Kuo | |
|---|---|
| Alma mater | National Taiwan University Albert Einstein College of Medicine (PhD) |
| Known for | Hepatitis C |
| Awards | Karl Landsteiner Memorial Award (1992) William Beaumont Prize (1994) Dale A. Smith Memorial Award (2005) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Virology |
| Institutions | Chiron Corporation |
Kuo graduated from the National Taiwan University in 1961 and completed his PhD in molecular biology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 1972.
Following the discovery of Hepatitis C at Chiron Corporation, Kuo, who was working in a lab next door to Michael Houghton's, designed a test that could screen blood for the infection, and in 1988 Hirohito was the first person to receive blood that had been screened by Kuo's method. The United States would go on to license the testing technique in 1990. The development of diagnostic reagents to detect HCV in blood supplies has reduced the risk of acquiring HCV through blood transfusion from one in three to about one in two million.
He was awarded the Karl Landsteiner Memorial Award (1992) and Dale A. Smith Memorial Award (2005) of the American Association of Blood Banks, and the William Beaumont Prize of the American Gastroenterological Association in 1994.