Judah Folkman, M.D.

Judah Folkman bet his medical career on a curious observation he made in the mid-1960s while serving as a lieutenant in the Navy. He noticed that cancer tumors growing in a laboratory dish only grow to the size of a pinhead then stop. Folkman never quit thinking about why this happens and how he might use that information to treat cancer patients.

By 1971, he published in a medical journal his theory that tumors have the capability to grow their own blood vessels, thereby obtaining the nourishment they need to keep growing in a body. The idea met with fierce criticism. But Folkman was urged on by the idea of developing drugs that would block the development, or genesis, of these vessels.

In 2004, a landmark trial of such an anti-angiogenesis drug, Avastin, successfully prolonged the lives of patients with terminal colon cancer, vindicating Folkman’s long-maligned research work.

Anti-angiogenesis drugs are also being studied to treat maladies other than cancer. As an example, medical experts have experienced recent successes in using them to combat macular degeneration, a major cause of blindness in elderly people.

Folkman also made many important contributions to medical technology and surgery. While a student at Harvard Medical School, for example, he developed one of the first implantable pacemakers to keep damaged hearts beating regularly.

Folkman was professor of cell biology at Harvard Medical School and director of the Vascular Biology Department at Children’s Hospital in Boston. He held honorary degrees from 177 universities and authored more than 500 scholarly papers.

- William J. Cromie