As a founding member of the University of Arizona Cancer Center, David Alberts, MD, and his influence on cancer research epitomizes Isaac Newton’s famous quote, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
Irwin H. Krakoff, former director of the University of Vermont Cancer Center who has also served in key jobs at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and MD Anderson Cancer Center, died on Aug. 9 in Savannah, GA.
Wendy R. Brewster, MD, PhD, a compassionate clinician-scientist who focused her career on caring for women with gynecologic cancer and studying at-risk populations and the disparate mechanisms leading to poor outcomes in endometrial, ovarian, and cervical cancers, died of pancreatic cancer on July 24. She passed surrounded and supported by her family in Houston, where her sister lived.
In May 1991, I sat in a law firm conference room in Washington, DC, listening to a pitch from a small group of women who had the idea to launch a political advocacy movement around breast cancer. One of those women was Dr. Susan Love. The person next to me nudged me with her elbow and whispered, “She is famous. She wrote this unbelievable book.”
The effort to defeat cancer is a visceral need for each of us, fueled by the memories of the myriad of special individuals we cared for who passed from this earth due to this terrible disease.
Mountain climber, mentor, swimmer and world-renowned scientist, Beverly Torok-Storb, PhD, a pioneering stem cell biologist who worked at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center for 45 years, died Friday, May 5, at her home in Seattle. She was 75.
It was around 2018, and the new patient volumes at Levine Cancer Institute had increased from about 6,000 new cases/year to just under 18,000.
Mark Haynes Smith died Nov. 3, 2022. He was my partner and husband for just shy of 39 years. He was only 63.
When you hear the words “world famous scientist,” “devoted parent and husband,” “enthusiastic mentor,” and “committed friend,” who comes to mind? I, like many others across the world, think of Dr. C. David Allis. David, a prolific scientist, with over 400 publications and more than 100,000 citations, made many discoveries that have shaped our understanding about how genes are regulated and made a full circle bench-to-bedside impact.
Dr. Jo Anne L. Earp, 79, professor emerita and past chair in the Department of Health Behavior at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, passed away in the early hours of Nov. 18 at UNC Hospitals in Chapel Hill, NC.
