Joseph H. Burchenal
Joseph Holland Burchenal (born December 21, 1912 in Milford (Delaware) , † March 8, 2006 in Hanover (New Hampshire) ) was an American doctor ( oncology ). He was a pioneer in the development of cancer chemotherapy drugs.
Burchenal attended Phillips Exeter Academy , graduated from Princeton University with a bachelor's degree and medicine from the University of Pennsylvania (MD) in 1937 . After that he was in pediatrics at Union Memorial Hospital in Baltimore. During World War II, he headed the infectious diseases department at Harvard Fifth General Hospital in Northern Ireland and France and tropical medicine at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, DC. He was at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center from the late 1940s , where he headed chemotherapy from 1952 to 1964, was vice president from 1964 to 1972, from 1966 director of clinical research at Memorial Hospital and finally head of the laboratory for applied therapy. In 1983 he retired. In addition, he was from 1952 professor at Cornell University (Sloan Kettering Division, Weill Medical College).
He is known for developing successful chemotherapy for Burkitt's lymphoma , an aggressive tumor that occurred in children in East Africa, in the 1960s . Various chemotherapeutic agents were combined (including cyclophosphamide ). He worked with Denis Burkitt , Herbert Oettgen and Peter Clifford.
In the early 1950s, he and others succeeded in introducing an often successful chemotherapy for acute leukemia in children with mercaptopurine (the clinical study was published in Blood in 1953 ). The drug was made available by Gertrude Elion and George Hitchings of Burroughs Wellcome (who received the Nobel Prize for this, among other things).
He was also instrumental in developing therapies for leukemia with combinations of several different chemotherapy drugs.
Burchenal has contributed to over 700 scientific publications.
He co-authored his colleague David A. Karnofsky's publication on the Karnofsky Index in 1949 .
In 1972 he received the Lasker ~ DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award and in 1970 the Léopold Griffuel Prize . In 1963 he received the Alfred P. Sloan Award in Cancer Research and in 1965/66 he was President of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), which in 1996 donated the Joseph H. Burchenal Clinical Research Award in his honor. It is awarded annually for special clinical achievements in oncology.
He was a passionate mountaineer, especially in the Adirondacks . Burchenal was married to Joan Barclay Riley for 58 years (since 1948) and had three sons and three daughters.
Web links
- Joseph H. Burchenal: In Memoriam (1912-2006) . In: Cancer Research , Volume 66, 2006, pp. 12037-12038.
- Obituary in the New York Times, March 16, 2006
- Biography in Cancer Progress Net
Individual evidence
- ↑ Assistant Professor from 1950
- ↑ JH Burchenall u. a .: Clinical Evaluation of a New Antimetabolite, 6-Mercaptopurine, in the Treatment of Leukemia and Allied Diseases . In: Blood , Volume 8, 1953, pp. 965-999, abstract . In 15 of 45 children there was a good clinical and haematological remission, in another 10 partial remission and clinical improvements.
- ^ A. Thomas: Joe Burchenal and the birth of combination chemotherapy . In: British J. Haematol. , Volume 133, 2006, pp. 493-503.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Burchenal, Joseph H. |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Burchenal, Joseph Holland |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American medic |
| DATE OF BIRTH | December 21, 1912 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Milford (Delaware) |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 8, 2006 |
| Place of death | Hanover, New Hampshire |