Dr. Dave Derse passed away on Friday October 9, 2009 after a battle with liver cancer. Dr. Derse made outstanding contributions to the HTLV field and he will be greatly missed. Not only was he an excellent and rigorous scientist but also patient, gentle, generous and always ready to help.
During his 25 years at the National Cancer Institute, he investigated the molecular mechanisms of retrovirus infection and replication, concentrating most recently on the human viruses HIV-1 and HTLV-1. In 2007, Dr. Derse and his research team discovered how HTLV-1 evades the body's natural defenses to fight off infection, a finding that may eventually lead to improved antiviral therapies and new strategies for preventing some types of cancer.
Dr. Derse earned his Ph.D. in 1982 from the State University of New York at Buffalo in the laboratory of Dr. Yung-Chi Cheng and did postdoctoral research with Dr. James Casey at the Louisiana State University Medical Center. He joined the National Cancer Institute in 1986 and in 1991 he became a tenured Senior Investigator. Dr. Derse joined the HIV Drug Resistance Program in 2004 as Head of the Retrovirus Gene Expression Section. He was also an Adjunct Professor in the Graduate Program in Genetics at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and served on the Editorial Boards of Virology and Retrovirology and the Executive Committee of the Center of Excellence in HIV/AIDS and Cancer Virology, Center for Cancer Research.