Remembering Judah Moses Folkma

Abstract

Judah Moses Folkman, M.D., director of the Vascular Biology Program at Childrens Hospital and Julia Dyckman Andrus Professor of Pediatric Surgery at Harvard Medical School, Boston, died suffering a heart attack at Denver Airport on January 14, 2008, at the age of 74. Folkman is recognized as a pioneer in the study of angiogenesis (the formation of new blood vessels), and in particular in its application in translational research in oncology. He was born in 1933 in Cleveland, Ohio, and as a child he sometimes accompanied his father, a rabbi, on visits to hospital patients. This experience resulted in an early wish to become a doctor. Under the mentorship of Dr Zollinger (then president of the American College of Surgeons), he exhibited extraordinary surgical abilities at a very young age. As a 19-year-old student at Harvard Medical School he participated in the creation of the first implantable heart pacemaker. Subsequently he served as a pediatric surgeon at the Massachusetts General Hospital and the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda. At the age of 34 Folkman was the youngest appointed surgeon-in-chief at the Childrens Hospital in Boston, where he served in that position for 14 years to then devote his efforts to basic research, being also professor of cell biology at Harvard Medical School. From 1968 Folkman directed the Surgical Research Laboratories, which became the Vascular Biology Program. In 1971 he published a seminal paper in the New England Journal of Medicine, proposing the revolutionary concept that tumors cannot grow without adequate blood supply and that invasive tumors secrete specific angiogenic factors. He hypothesized that, as a consequence, the inhibition of angiogenesis could be a novel anticancer therapeutic strategy. For three decades Folkmans work was looked upon with skepticism by the scientific community but he and his team persevered in their research, discovering the first selective proangiogenic factor, namely basic fibroblast growth factor, followed by the natural antiangiogenic agents, angiostatin and endostatin. The initial skepticism turned to overwhelming enthusiasm and in May 1998 the New York Times quoted the Nobel laureate James Watson as saying, ''Judahs going to cure cancer in two years''. In reply, Folkman ironically stated, ''if you are a mouse, we can take very good care of you''. He was a superb physician, a brilliant and creative scientist, an extraordinary mentor and, with his contagious enthusiasm, an example for young scientists. Folkman authored more than 400 peer-reviewed paperspapers and some 100 book chapters and monographs. His work was published in all of the most prestigious journals including the New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, PNAS, Cell, Science, Nature, Nature Medicine, Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Cancer Research and others. He was awarded honorary degrees worldwide and was elected member of the National Academy of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophy Society, and he was recently appointed by President Bush to the National Cancer Advisory Board of the National Institutes of Health. I first met Judah Folkman in 1990 and had the honor to publish a paper with him in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute in 1992 reporting on the first study on the prognostic value of the degree of microvessel density in invasive breast cancer. In 1993 I spent a three-month period at Folkmans laboratory, where I had the opportunity to appreciate not only his exceptional scientific culture but also his human qualities. Judah Folkman greatly influenced my knowledge and my scientific interest and he was always available to help me in my projects. I am extremely grateful to Judah for having invited me to contribute a chapter to his last monograph entitled Angiogenesis: An Integrative Approach from Science to Medicine. Folkman leaves the oncological community a vast biological patrimony on the mechanisms of control of angiogenesis and has had a profound influence on generations of researchers, with today over 1,000 laboratories worldwide engaged in angiogenesis research. Having contributed to the development of more than 10 antiangiogenic agents, which have improved the clinical outcome of certain tumor types, he has generated new hopes and possibilities of cure for cancer patients. Giampietro Gasparini Head, Medical Oncology San Filippo Neri Hospital, Rome, Italy REFERENCES 1. Cooke R. M. Judah Folkman, biomedical pioneer, dies at 47. http://harvardscience.harvard.edu/medicine-health/articles/ m-judah-folkman-biomedical-pioneer-dies-74 (Accessed March 20, 2008).