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Flossie Staal-Wong, a researcher who helped to identify the cause of AIDS, has died of pneumonia at the age of 73, reported the San Diego Union-Trib.
“She was one of the giants in the fight against HIV/AIDS,” said Dr. David Brenner, vice chancellor of health sciences at UC San Diego. “She worked with Dr. Robert Gallo to make the fundamental insights that revealed the cause of AIDS, and which helped lead to the first drug therapies.”
Just last year, Staal-Wong became a member of the National Women’s Hall of Fame in an induction ceremony that also included Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor and actress Jane Fonda.
She is also credited with transforming UC San Diego into the one of the world’s AIDS research centers.
According to UMKC, she joined the National Cancer Institute in Maryland in 1973 to research retroviruses and the cause of AIDS. That breakthrough came at the same time as a French team, and she is credited with being a co-discover.
In 1985, she became the first person to clone HIV and genetically map the virus.
The Institute of Scientific Information named her the top women scientist of the world in the 1980s.
“She was an essential force in figuring out the molecular biology of HIV and variations within the virus,” Gallo told the Union-Tribune. “Flossie also did the molecular biology for the second-generation blood test for HIV.”
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