Changing the paradigm: How a veterinary oncologist informed knowledge of hypoxia

When a Galapagos tortoise suffering from sarcoma needed help in 1983, zookeepers at the Staten Island Zoo called Mark Dewhirst, DVM, PhD, a young scientist at the University of Arizona who had been conducting clinical trials on dogs using radiotherapy.

They were hoping radiotherapy might also help the tortoise — named Jalopy because he scooted around with the aid of a skateboard contraption after losing mobility from his many surgeries — so they shipped him Dewhirst’s way.

Dewhirst’s ingenuity in rigging up a system to treat the 80-year-old tortoise, a species he’d never treated before, lengthened the tortoise’s life and made headlines.

The grandson of farmers and the son of a science professor at University of Arizona who studied parasites in cattle, Dewhirst said he grew up around animals, first in Kansas and then in Arizona. He seemed to be destined for veterinary medicine.

After earning an undergraduate degree in chemistry from University of Arizona and doctorates in veterinary medicine (1975) and radiation biology (1979) from Colorado State University, he joined the faculty at University of Arizona. His research career spanned more than three decades, most of them at Duke.

Sanjiv Sam Gambhir, MD, PhD, professor and chair of radiology at the Stanford School of Medicine and an internationally recognized pioneer in molecular imaging, died July 18, 2020 of cancer. He was 57.

The Virginia and D.K. Ludwig Professor of Cancer Research, Gambhir dedicated his career to developing methods of early disease detection, ushering in a new era of molecular imaging to flag signals of disease in its nascent stages. He was director of the Canary Center at Stanford for Cancer Early Detection, director of the Precision Health and Integrated Diagnostics Center at Stanford and director of the Molecular Imaging Program at Stanford.

“Sam was a true visionary and a scientist of the highest caliber. His research and innovations have, with no uncertainty, founded modern medicine’s approach to early disease diagnostics and will continue to guide the future of precision health,” said Lloyd Minor, MD, dean of the School of Medicine. “Sam’s contributions to Stanford, to human health, to the science of diagnostics and to the many lives he has touched and impacted throughout his career have been immeasurable.”

Within the field of radiology, Gambhir was known for the development of positron emission tomography reporter genes, which can flag molecular activity that signals something’s gone awry in the body.

Flags were lowered to half-staff today (June 17, 2020) across Duke for Neil Spector, MD, a nationally recognized physician-scientist, translational research leader, and oncology mentor, who passed away on Sunday, June 14, 2020. He was 63.

Dr. Spector was the Sandra Coates Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine, an associate Professor of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology, and a member of the Duke Cancer Institute.

He joined Duke Cancer Institute and the faculty at Duke University School of Medicine in September 2006 after serving for eight years as director of Exploratory Medical Sciences-Oncology at GlaxoSmithKline and as adjunct associate professor of Medicine, Division of Hematology/Oncology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Dr. Spector’s appointments at DCI include having served as associate director for Translational Research, director of the Developmental Therapeutics Program, and associate co-director of Clinical Research with the Breast Cancer disease group.

His laboratory research focused on elucidating molecular mechanisms of therapeutic resistance to targeted therapies and strategies to prevent and overcome resistance. He is credited with leading two molecularly targeted therapies to FDA approval, one for the treatment of pediatric T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (nelarabine) and another for the treatment of HER2 overexpressing breast cancers (lapatinib).

A medical oncologist, Dr. Spector most recently served as an attending physician and supervised medical oncology fellows at the Durham VA Healthcare System.