AWARDEE OF MEDICAL SCIENCES PRIZE

GAO SHOUYI

Abstract

Prof. Gao Shouyi, a bacteriologist, was born in April 1927 in Xinmin, Liaoning Province. He graduated from China Medical University in 1950 and studied at All India Institute of Hygiene and Public Health, Calcutta, India as an exchange scholar from 1959 to 1960. After returning to China, he has been mainly engaged in cholera control and research work for about 40 years at the Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and IEM, Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine. He was once depute director and then became director of the Institute. He is now chairman of Expert Advisory Committee on Diarrhoeal Diseases, Ministry of Health and a Member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.
During his stay in India, he found the Mukerjees cholera group Ⅳ phage to be able to differentiate the classical type and ELTor type of Vibrio cholerae in 1960. With the group Ⅳ phage, he determined the first epidemic of ELTor cholera in China in 1961. He developed a phage-typing scheme with 5 vibrio phages isolated from China in 1966 and raised the viewpoint that Vibrio cholerae ELTor could be divided into two kinds of strains, i.e. epidemigenic strains (ES) and non-epidemigenic strains (NES), by the phage-typing scheme in 1917. Further he and coworkers established a phage-biotyping scheme instead of the phage-typing scheme in 1978 and did a lot of research work to compare the two kinds of strains. The characteristics of ES are extremely different from those of NES in virulence, colonizing ability and toxin production. The molecular genetics studies showed that the molecular features of ES are identical, but different from those of NES. For the ES there are cholera toxin genes but there are not for the NES. These results strongly demonstrated that the differentiation of the two kinds of strains by the phage-biotype possesses molecular genetic bases. According to the viewpoint of the two kinds of strains, it is certainly right to take different measures in the control of cholera. Contraction should be put on the surveillance and control of the ES which are able to cause epidemics and pandemics of cholera, while the NES can be treated as a common diarrhoeal germs. The high effects for cholera control and great economic and social benefits have been yielded by the utilization of this scheme in China since 1978.
Prof. Gao has published more than 130 scientific papers. He has obtained the National Science Conference Award (1978), one first class award (1989) and one third class award (1990) of Progress in Science and Technology from Ministry of Health, and one first class of National Award of Progress in Science and Technology in 1991.