M. Judah Folkman, a Harvard Medical School professor associated with Children's Hospital in Boston, was cited for his contributions to the study of angiogenesis, the growth of blood vessels. Folkman's work has profound implications in the control of malignant tumors, since these tumors co-opt the body's own angiogenic processes in order to create networks of blood vessels for nourishment.
Folkman's work, which began in the early 1960s when he was drafted into the Navy as a surgeon, drew a great deal of skepticism early on. "The major hurdle was changing people's minds," he recalls. "In the 1960s, it was widely believed that tumors simply widened the host blood vessels. Nobody thought that the tumors could stimulate new vessels."
Folkman first hypothesized in the early 1960s that tumor growth was contingent on a supply of blood vessels, but it was several years before he could prove his theory. One of the ...
