Now, Folkman, 65, a researcher at Children's Hospital in Boston, has offered hope to the world. Though he hastily counseled caution as news spread that his pioneering work with lab animals could lead to a breakthrough in curing cancer—"If you have cancer and you're a mouse, we can take good care of you," he said—the excitement of the moment was palpable.
For more than 30 years, Folkman had labored diligently but far from the limelight. While mainstream cancer researchers concentrated on directly attacking tumors, he took an alternative approach: finding ways to cut off the blood supply that allows tumors to grow. Then, working with Dr. Michael O'Reilly, a researcher in his Boston laboratory, Folkman discovered two natural agents—angiostatin and endostatin—that seem to rid mice of cancer without any side effects. "I've been waiting for results like these my whole life," Folkman once told U.S. News & World Report. (The findings had escaped wide public attention until The New York Times reported them in a May 3 front-page story.)
Ironically, many colleagues had made light of his work for years. "A weaker person would have collapsed and gotten out of it," says Dr. Vincent DeVita, director of the Yale Cancer Center. But Jerome and Bessie Folkman had raised their three children (David, 63, is a San Francisco businessman; Joy, 61, a teacher of education in Rochester, N.Y.) to pursue their passions confidently. "Our parents had tremendous trust in all of us, and we responded very positively to that," says Joy.
At 8, determined to become a doctor, Judah would work late into the night in his basement chemistry lab. When, a few years later, his paternal grandfather offered him a Jeep as a bar mitzvah gift, he asked instead for a powerful microscope. ("Joy and I thought he was a little off," says David. "But it didn't surprise us.") He used his sister's toy refrigerator and his brother's bicycle pump in an award-winning high school science project: he kept a rat's heart beating outside its body for over 30 minutes.
After ripping through Ohio State in three years, Folkman entered Harvard Medical School at 20 and went on to a residency at Massachusetts General Hospital, where he was known for staying on duty long after his shifts were over. "How could I leave?" he asked a student later. "The patients are sick." But he did find the time to meet Paula Prial, whom he married in 1960 and with whom he has two grown daughters.
After a stint in the Navy, Folkman went to Boston Children's Hospital, where as chief of surgery he was involved in the early development of the pacemaker. But in 1981 he left to devote full time to researching cancer. Among his lab associates, Folkman acquired a reputation for working long hours and getting by with minimal sleep. "His hobby is his work, and his work is his hobby," Paula once told the Boston Globe. A former associate, surgical oncologist Dr. Harold Brem, recalls Folkman's offering a suggestion one Saturday night as Brem was leaving the lab. When Brem told him he would act on it in the morning, Folkman seemed puzzled. "Why wait until tomorrow?" he asked.
For all his dedication, Folkman ran into frustrations. "For 10 years, nothing worked," he told the Globe. "There was a lot of self-doubt." He added, "In the hospital, a lot of [surgical procedures] are successful. In laboratory experiments, there is a high failure rate." Even when he seemed to be making progress, many researchers—skeptical that a surgeon could contribute much to a field dominated by molecular biologists—dismissed his claims as un-proven. Only in the last six years has Folkman's work in angiogenesis, the field he pioneered, been fully accepted in the medical community.
Though there is a long history of cancer treatments that show great promise in lab animals but prove less effective in humans, and Folkman's innovations aren't likely to be human-tested for more than a year, the future seems promising. "If your idea succeeds, everybody says you're persistent," Folkman, who also teaches at Harvard Medical School, tells his students. "If it doesn't, you're obstinate." If his own ideas should strike a critical blow against cancer, of course, "persistent" will be the least of his credits.
Thomas Fields-Meyer
Joseph V. Tirella in New York City
- Contributors:
- Joseph V. Tirella.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
