(This article, reprinted with permission, concerning Judah Folkman, class of 1950, and his recent death, appeared in The Columbus Dispatch on January 16, 2008)  1/22/08

Dr. Judah Folkman 1933-2008
Researcher devoted life to curing cancer

Bexley High, OSU alumnus pioneered treatment to slow the disease in humans

Wednesday, January 16, 2008 3:16 AM
By Mark Pratt
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

Dr. Judah Folkman, a director at Children's Hospital Boston, died of an apparent heart attack.

BOSTON -- Dr. Judah Folkman, a groundbreaking cancer researcher whose work cured the disease in mice and gave hope for a cure in humans, has died.

He was 74.

The former Bexley resident and Ohio State University graduate died late Monday, said Elizabeth Andrews, a spokeswoman at Children's Hospital Boston, where Folkman was director of the vascular biology program.

He died of an apparent heart attack.

Folkman's research focused on cutting off the blood supply that cancer cells need to grow, called angiogenesis, which cured mice of the disease. Although that success has not carried over into humans, his work opened the door to a new line of treatment that has slowed the growth of cancer in humans and shown success in treating other diseases.

"Is it a cure? No, but his idea is to drive tumors into dormancy, and for that, it works," said Robert Cooke, who wrote the book Dr. Folkman's War: Angiogenesis and the Struggle to Defeat Cancer. "It's been turned into a disease like diabetes that can be managed."

News of his death came as a shock to the central Ohio medical community.

"He was one of the most influential scientists our country has ever known and the most brilliant person I've known," said Dr. Gail E. Besner, professor of surgery and pediatrics at Nationwide Children's Hospital.

She worked with Folkman at Children's Hospital Boston from 1989 to 1991, which she called the "most exciting period of my life just to be in his laboratory."

A poster of Folkman hangs on the back of Besner's office door.

Dr. Chris Ellison, chairman of surgery at Ohio State University Medical Center and the Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital, called Folkman a great educator, mentor and "creative genius."

Folkman's research dates to the 1960s when he worked at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., as a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy. He and a colleague, working with rabbits and mice, noticed that cancerous tumors stopped growing when removed from a body, then started growing again when implanted in another animal.

"He reasoned there was some barrier that stopped those tumors from growing. And after years of banging his head against the wall, he realized that it was the blood supply."

He carried on the work in relative anonymity until a May 1998 story on the front page of the Sunday New York Times, in which Dr. James Watson, the Nobel laureate and co-discoverer of the shape of DNA, was quoted as saying, "Judah is going to cure cancer in two years."

"That set off a fuss, and many of his colleagues were all upset because it was too radical an idea, they said it can't be all that simple," Cooke said.

Folkman's lab had discovered two natural compounds, called endostatin and angio- statin, that appear to be powerful cancer fighters, at least in mice. When the mice were given the drugs, their tumors shrank and disappeared.

His discoveries prompted pharmaceutical companies to pursue research in the area, and some drugs have succeeded in extending the lives of patients with advanced cancer.

"The fact that other scientists picked up the work that he did made him tremendously happy," said Dr. Jim Mandell, president and CEO of Children's Hospital Boston, who has known Folkman for three decades.

Folkman was born in Cleveland and graduated from Bexley High School and Ohio State before going on to Harvard Medical School.

His father, Rabbi Jerome D. Folkman, and mother, Bessie Folkman, led the congregation at Temple Israel in Bexley for 40 years.

Elaine Tenenbaum, the temple's executive director, said Folkman was the "first child to have a bar mitzvah at Temple Israel."

It was there, at temple, that Folkman and Mark Feinknopf met as children and continued a lifelong friendship.

When doctors diagnosed cancer in Feinknopf's wife, Shelia, Folkman helped her get the best treatment. She died in 1997.

"He really cared," Feinknopf said yesterday from his Atlanta home. "His empathy was at such a high level."

He said he spoke to Folkman about a month ago and asked him when he planned to retire.

"He told me, 'I have a sign on my door that says Retirement gets in your way of doing what you love,' " Feinknopf said. "My sense is he was doing what he loved until the day he died."

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