E. Donnal Thomas | Transplant pioneer, 92
E. Donnall Thomas, a physician who pioneered the use of bone-marrow transplants in leukemia patients and later won the 1990 Nobel Prize in medicine, has died in Seattle at age 92.
E. Donnall Thomas, a physician who pioneered the use of bone-marrow transplants in leukemia patients and later won the 1990 Nobel Prize in medicine, has died in Seattle at age 92.
The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center announced the death Saturday. A spokesman said the cause was heart disease.
Thomas' work is among the greatest success stories in the treatment of cancer. Bone marrow transplantation and its sister therapy, blood stem cell transplantation, have improved the survival rates for some blood cancers to upward of 90 percent from almost zero.
This year, about 60,000 transplants will be performed worldwide, according to the Hutchinson Center.
"Imagine coming up with an idea, making it a reality and touching that many lives," said Fred Appelbaum, Thomas' friend and the director of the center's Clinical Research Division.
Thomas took after his father and became a doctor after getting his medical degree from Harvard. In 1956, he performed the first human-bone marrow transplant.
Thomas, along with a small team of fellow researchers, including his wife Dottie, pursued transplantations throughout the 1960s and 1970s despite skepticism from the medical establishment.