Morton M Kligerman

摘要

Pioneer in radiation therapy. Born on Dec 26,1917, in Philadelphia, PA, USA, he died on June 7, 2006, of oesophageal cancer in Philadelphia, aged 88 years.Morton Kligerman had a critical role in the early days of radiation oncology. "In the mid-1950s through to the early 1960s, the field underwent a dramatic transition", said Gillies McKenna, who worked with Kligerman at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA, beginning in 1987 "It moved from being a very empirical field to one driven by an evidence-based approach" under the direction of Kligerman, then at Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA, and other leading figures in the USA such as Gilbert Fletcher and Henry Kaplan.Kligerman-known by everyone as "the Klig"-was a pioneer in preoperative radiation treatments, said McKenna, now professor of radiation oncology and biology at Oxford University, Oxford, UK. He was also among the first to use halogenated pyrimidines to sensitise tumours to radiation, and helped to develop WR-2721 (amifostine), an agent that protects healthy tissue from the effects of radiation. "The trial he wanted to do using amifostine in head and neck cancer was going to be very difficult to do in the USA", said Steve Hahn, who worked with Kligerman at the University of Pennsylvania and is now chair of the radiation oncology department there, "so he ran it himself in China. Based in large part on the work that he did, the drug was approved".