Professor John M. Goldman, CML Pioneer 1938–2013
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Transcript of Professor John M. Goldman, CML Pioneer 1938–2013
OBITUARY
Professor John M. Goldman, CML Pioneer 1938–2013
Robert Peter Gale
Published online: 12 January 2014
� The Japanese Society of Hematology 2014
John M. Goldman, Emeritus Professor at Imperial College
London, was a leader in studies of chronic myeloid leu-
kaemia (CML) for the last 40 years. John was born in 1938
and educated at Magdalene College, Oxford where he read
Medicine completing his medical training at St. Bartholo-
mew Hospital, London. He initially considered a career in
surgery, then oncology and radiation therapy but realized
his gift was in haematology continuing his studies at the
University of Miami and Harvard University. In 1971 John
joined a distinguished group of haematologists in the
Department of Haematology at Hammersmith Hospital
including Sir David Galton, Professors Victor Hoffbrand,
Daniel Catovsky and others. He worked closely for several
years with Prof. Lucio Luzatto eventually heading the
Department and Medical Research Council Leukemia Unit.
Prof. Goldman trained the current generation of eminent
British haematologists too numerous to mention including
his successor at the Hammersmith Prof. Jane Apperley.
Prof. Goldman pioneered use of auto- and then allotrans-
plants in CML. He helped in finding the Anthony Nolan
Trust of one-half million volunteer donors so as to extend
applicability of allotransplants to more persons with leu-
kaemia and a leukaemia-orientated charity, LEUKA.
In the 1990s Goldman focused on promising research on
imatinib, a tyrosine kinase inhibitor directed towards the
genetic mutation causing the disease defined in 1983 by
Profs. Eli Cannani, Robert Peter Gale and others. The drug
worked brilliantly in preclinical studies done by Prof. Brian
Drucker but no drug company was willing to develop it
because leukaemia is a rare disease. Much like Sirs Howard
Florey and Ernest Chain who developed penicillin fol-
lowing its discovery by Sir Alexander Fleming but had to
travel to the United States to find a drug company willing
to produce it despite the potential to alter the course of
WW II, Goldman flew to Basel to persuade Novartis to
manufacture imatinib. He succeeded and imatinib and
successor tyrosine kinase inhibitors have extended the lives
of tens of thousands of people worldwide.
Prof. Goldman founded several professional organiza-
tions promoting research and collaboration in blood dis-
orders and transplantation including the European
Haematology Association (EHA) and the European Society
for Blood and Marrow Transplantation (EBMT). He was
R. P. Gale (&)
Section of Haematology, Division of Experimental Medicine,
Department of Medicine, Imperial College London, London,
UK
e-mail: [email protected]
123
Int J Hematol (2014) 99:103–104
DOI 10.1007/s12185-014-1499-9
president of both and during 1998–2002 was Chairperson
of the International Bone Marrow transplant Registry
(IBMTR). In 1980, along with Prof. Gale he founded Bone
Marrow Transplantation. John served on the editorial
boards of many other journals including the International
Journal of Hematology.
Following his retirement from Hammersmith Hospital in
2004, Goldman focused on global health issues. He
developed the International CML Foundation with Profs.
Timothy Hughes and Jorge Cortes to make innovations in
leukaemia diagnosis and therapy available worldwide. He
also spent a year at the National Institutes of Health in
Bethesda, Maryland as the Fogarty Scholar with Prof. John
Barrett and where he helped standardize the use of poly-
merase chain reaction (PCR) to guide therapy of CML.
Late, he campaigned to make new cancer drugs available to
people in developing countries. The World Health Orga-
nization predicts that by 2050 more than one-half of new
cancers will occur in developing countries.
Prof. Goldman was considered the leader in his field. He
published over 700 scientific papers and many books,
coordinated an international community of leukaemia
researchers and fostered a climate of openness, collabora-
tion and free intellectual exchange. He also mentored a
generation of leukaemia specialists who now head hae-
matology departments across the UK and the world.
John Goldman was a skilled physician with legendary
devotion to his patients. His British and American
colleagues though little of calling him at 0100 hours
London time to discuss an idea or complex medical case;
no one is certain when (or if) he ever slept.
John Goldman was a great friend and admirer of Japa-
nese haematology. He gave many lectures in Japan and had
many Japanese students, colleagues and friends including
Profs. Fumimaro Takaku, Mine Harada and Masao To-
monaga and many others.
Prof. Goldman was a gentleman and scholar known by
for his erudition, sense of irony, generosity and modesty.
He enjoyed reading Saki, WIlde, Shakespeare, Greek
mythology and histories of the Napoleonic wars. He loved
skiing, spoke perfect French and passable Russian and
Spanish (his Japanese was dreadful) and travelled exten-
sively. He once drove from London to India with a group of
his Oxford classmates. When their party was imprisoned by
Iranian authorities, they escaped by drugging their captors
with barbiturates. In a letter to the Times of which he was
proud John tried to solve the problem of Greek claims over
the Elgin Marbles at the British Museum. He suggested a
duplicate set be made and each side alternately choose the
piece from each pair they wanted until two full sets were
assembled, each with some original and some duplicates.
No one has come up with a better solution but the quandary
remains; apparently, a trickier problem than curing CML.
104 R. P. Gale
123