John Mendelsohn

Abstract

Renowned cancer researcher who led the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Born on Aug 31, 1936, in Cincinnati, OH, USA, he died on Jan 7, 2019, in Houston, TX, USA, of glioblastoma, aged 82 years. A hands-on administrator, John Mendelsohn liked to roam the halls of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, TX, USA, with a pad of paper, soliciting input from employees about what they needed to do better at their jobs. As President of the MD Anderson Cancer Center from 1996 to 2011, Mendelsohn oversaw a major expansion of the institution. During his tenure, facilities for research and patient care increased substantially, and MD Anderson's annual revenue rose from US$726 million to more than $3 billion, while the campus more than quadrupled in size. “John was an internationally acclaimed physician-scientist—a giant in medicine and oncology—and at the same time he touched the lives of all around him”, said Peter W T Pisters, the current President of MD Anderson. “John leaves an incredible legacy that will endure across the globe, for generations to come, as one of the greatest opponents cancer has ever faced. His innovative work paved the way to approaches now used daily around the world, and it led to extraordinary improvements in cancer care and survival.” Mendelsohn attended Harvard University and studied biochemical sciences, graduating in 1958. He went to the University of Glasgow in the UK on a Fulbright Scholarship before enrolling at Harvard Medical School, from which he received his degree in 1963. Mendelsohn did his residency at what was then the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, in Boston, USA, then completed a fellowship in haematology-oncology at Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis. His first academic post was as an assistant professor of medicine at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), where he and biologist Gordon Sato, who died in 2017, discovered the antibody that would become the cancer drug cetuximab (Erbitux). “The plan was to make an antibody that would bind to the tumor in the same place as the epidermal growth factor would otherwise bind”, Mendelsohn recalled in a 2017 profile on OncLive, a cancer website. “Technology had just gotten to the point that it was possible to develop such an antibody. It wasn't very quick or easy, though. In all, we spent 3 years with a team of postdoctoral students and scientists producing the molecule that eventually went into clinical trials.” Cetuximab won approval of the US Food and Drug Administration in 2004, some two decades after his initial findings. “I'm just happy I was able to see it through and that my work has had a real impact on so many patients”, Mendelsohn said in 2017. During his time at UCSD, Mendelsohn became founding director of its cancer centre. In 1985, he left UCSD for Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, where he headed the Department of Medicine between 1985 and 1996. After his presidency at MD Anderson, he remained there as a director of its Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan Institute for Personalized Cancer Therapy and later became president emeritus of the MD Anderson Cancer Center. Richard L Schilsky, Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, which gave Mendelsohn its 2002 David A Karnofsky Memorial Award and Lecture and the 2018 Distinguished Achievement Award, worked closely with Mendelsohn for a decade. “John was a builder of consensus because he understood the value of teamwork. He understood that if you put a biologist and a genetic expert in a room together, they could make some progress”, Schilsky said. “But if you layered in a physicist or a mathematician or a statistician, it could lead to a path that was perhaps more creative and innovative than if you just brought together people who were working in the conventional cancer disciplines.” Larry Norton, whom Mendelsohn recruited to Memorial Sloan Kettering in the late 1980s, called him “the quintessential remarkable leader”. “Most conversations with him were him asking questions and drawing ideas out of you”, said Norton, the Medical Director of the Evelyn H Lauder Breast Center at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Professor of Medicine at the Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City. “He clearly had an idea of where to go, but he didn't say, you will now do this. It elevated everybody around him, it elevated their thinking and commitment.” Mendelsohn married Anne Charles, a former research chemist at Polaroid, in 1962. She survives him, as do their sons Andrew, Eric, and Jeffrey, as well as eight grandchildren.