howeenterprise.com
Monday, September 21, 2015
Page #14
Texas native was "Father of Bone Marrow Transplant" fellow UT student Dorothy Martin in 1942, who would later work in his labs with him. By 1943, having just earned a masters degree in chemistry, he enrolled at Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Ken Bridges Human beings by their nature are problem solvers, to one degree or another. Dedicated scientists and physicians have solved many problems by developing cures for diseases once thought incurable, replacing the dread of diagnosis with hope for a healthy future. Texas native and Nobel Prizewinning scientist E. Donnall Thomas opened a path for many with his breakthrough treatments for leukemia, developing a process that has saved thousands of lives. Don Thomas was born and raised in the small community of Mart, just east of Waco. His father was a respected physician in the community, Dr. Edward E. Thomas. His mother, Angie Donnall, worked as a teacher. Science and education became indispensable parts of his life, and he excelled. He attended the University of Texas beginning in 1937, majoring in chemistry. Thomas took a series of jobs around campus to pay for his studies. He graduated in 1941 and dove into his graduate studies. He married
He began his first experiments on research improved the process. dogs in 1957. The early results were discouraging, and most subjects While many aspects of leukemia died. Many of Thomas’s colleagues remain a mystery, the disease is no tried to persuade him to abandon his longer the automatic death sentence research given the initial failures, but it once was. The disease still Thomas was determined to succeed. causes many deaths each year, but Leukemia, a cancer of the bone Of those that survived, Thomas new treatments continue to emerge, marrow which causes abnormal or noticed that matching bone marrow and hundreds of thousands have non-functioning white blood cells type was the key to a successful been cured of leukemia through and eventually death, was a transplant. Thomas’s research. Bone marrow subject of increasing study and transplants now cure up to 80% of experimentation by the 1940s. No After he moved to the University of leukemia cases in children. effective treatments existed at that Washington’s Fred Hutchinson point as frustrated doctors and Cancer Research Center in the 1960s, Thomas was revered by his scientists searched for a cure. Thomas developed an improved colleagues and awarded the Nobel Thomas began investigating the type-matching process in human Prize in Medicine in 1990, an field increasingly as his medical beings, allowing successful bone award placing him among the studies progressed. He graduated marrow transplants between siblings greatest scientific minds in history. from medical school in 1946, or, later, with another closelyHe went into semi-retirement that served his residency, or formal matched type. By the end of the year, living a quiet life with his physician training period, at the 1970s, combining chemotherapy and family before his death in 2012. prestigious Peter Brent Brigham bone marrow transplants, Thomas Hospital in Boston before serving reported a cure rate of 50%. Bone Dr. Bridges is a Texas native, briefly in the U. S. Army. marrow transplants soon became an writer, and history professor. He accepted treatment and the cure rates can be reached at After his military service, he steadily climbed as increased drkenbridges@gmail.com. served from 1955 to 1963 as physician-in-chief at Mary Imogene Bassett Hospital in New York, where he began his cancer research. Thomas devised a completely new approach. By destroying the existing diseased bone marrow with radiation and then transplanting new, healthy marrow from a donor, the body could then regenerate its own ability to create white blood cells essential to survival and end the disease for good. However, in the 1950s, scientists still understood little about radiation or matching In this 1990 file photo, Dr. E. Donnall Thomas, left, accepts the Nobel patient marrow types. Prize in medicine or physiology from the King of Sweden. (Photo: Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center)
