John Michael Bishop, the American immunologist and Nobel Prize-winning scientist whose groundbreaking research transformed the understanding of cancer, has died at the age of 90.

Axar.az reports he passed away on March 20 in San Francisco.

Born in York in 1936, Bishop earned his medical degree from Harvard Medical School before building a distinguished academic career at University of California, San Francisco.

In collaboration with Harold E. Varmus, Bishop discovered that cancer-causing genes originate from normal cellular genes, a breakthrough that revolutionized cancer research.

The pair were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1989 for their work.

Bishop later served as chancellor of UCSF from 1998 to 2009, overseeing major institutional expansion. His research laid the foundation for modern cancer biology and continues to influence scientific advancements in diagnosis and treatment.