Paul Marks, a cancer researcher credited with turning Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center into a top research institution, died from pulmonary fibrosis and lung cancer last week (April 28). He was 93.
As president of MSKCC from 1980 to 1999, Marks recruited many up-and-coming cancer scientists of the time, and made the molecular basis of cancer a research priority. His own work on the biology of histone deacetylases (HDACs), proteins that modify chromatin structure and gene expression, helped launch an epigenetics research arm at MSKCC and led to the development of the anticancer compound vorinostat, currently approved to treat some forms of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Born in Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania, in 1926, Marks lost his mother to an accident when he was around five years old. His father left Marks with relations, returning with a new wife and son five years later.
Marks went to high school in Brooklyn and was ...
