Stone Lecture Scheduled for 26 April

12 April 2007—Francis V. Chisari, professor and head of the Division of Experimental Pathology at The Scripps Research Institute, will present the 2006/2007 Stone Memorial Lecture at 4:00 p.m. on Thursday, 26 April 2007, in 100 Life Sciences Building, the Berg Auditorium, on the Penn State University Park campus. This free public lecture, titled "Robust Hepatitis-C Virus Infection In Vitro: Coevolution of Virus and Host," is sponsored by the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

Chisari is known for his work on hepatitis-B-virus (HBV) and hepatitis-C-virus (HCV) infections and the related development of cancer. He is widely recognized for a series of discoveries that defined the immunological basis for clearing HBV infection and for HBV's persistence. He demonstrated that the immune response can terminate HBV replication without killing infected cells. He established the immunological basis of the production of cancer of the liver during chronic HBV infection, and he laid the foundation for the development of therapeutic vaccines to cure chronic hepatitis—the leading cause of liver cancer throughout the world. Recently, Chisari has been at the forefront of HCV research. He has used the chimpanzee model to study HCV infection and pathogenesis. In June 2005, his laboratory reported in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the first successful propagation of HCV in tissue culture.

Chisari's scientific accomplishments have been recognized by election to the National Academy of Sciences in 2002 and to the American Academy of Microbiology in 2002. He received his bachelor's degree from Fordham University in 1963 and a doctoral degree from Cornell University Medical College in 1968.

The Stone Memorial Lecture honors Robert W. Stone, head for 23 years of the former Department of Microbiology, which merged with the biophysics and biochemistry departments in 1979 to form the present Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

[ T S H / L A K ]