Former Memorial Sloan-Kettering Physician-In-Chief Dies
August 15, 2004
NEW YORK - David W. Golde, MD, former Physician-in-Chief of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, died on August 9, 2004 at age 63.
Dr. Golde served as Physician-in-Chief of Memorial Hospital from February 1996 until January 2002. After stepping down as Physician-in-Chief, Dr. Golde remained on the staff of Memorial Hospital and continued his laboratory research. At the time of his death, he was head of the Molecular and Cellular Hematology Laboratory at the Sloan-Kettering Institute and an attending physician on the Leukemia Service in the Department of Medicine, and held the Enid A. Haupt Chair in Hematologic Oncology.
"David contributed greatly to every aspect of our organization as clinician, scientist, institutional leader, and mentor during his 13 years here," said Harold Varmus, MD, President of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.
Under Dr. Golde's tenure as Physician-in-Chief, Memorial Hospital was reorganized into units in which patients are admitted according to their type of cancer rather than by discipline, and a regional care network was established to provide outpatient cancer care at suburban locations. Dr. Golde also established an Office of Clinical Research to provide oversight and management of the Center's numerous clinical trials.
In addition to his clinical leadership, Dr. Golde was renowned for his contributions to the understanding of normal and leukemic blood cell growth and development and for applying these discoveries clinically. His demonstration that certain white blood cells produce colony-stimulating factors in humans laid the groundwork for the isolation and characterization of these factors. He was the first to purify human granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF), a substance that promotes the growth of infection-fighting white blood cells. GM-CSF has proven beneficial in enhancing recovery from bone marrow transplantation and chemotherapy, and in the management of acute leukemia.
A co-discoverer of the second known human retrovirus (HTLV-II), Dr. Golde's laboratory cloned the virus and defined its biologic characteristics. His recent research focused on blood growth factor receptor biology and the regulation of molecular transport in normal and cancerous tissue. He recently discovered the primary mechanism of vitamin C uptake in normal defense host cells and their malignant counterparts.
Dr. Golde received his MD degree from McGill University in 1966, and did his specialty and subspecialty training at the University of California, San Francisco, and the National Institutes of Health. Before coming to Memorial Sloan-Kettering in 1991 as head of the Division of Hematologic Oncology in the Department of Medicine, Dr. Golde was a professor of medicine and Chief of the Division of Hematology and Oncology at the UCLA School of Medicine. At UCLA, he was also Director of the UCLA AIDS Center, Program Director for the UCLA AIDS Clinical Trials Group, and Director of the UCLA Clinical Research Center.
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center is the world's oldest and largest institution devoted to prevention, patient care, research, and education in cancer. Our scientists and clinicians generate innovative approaches to better understand, diagnose, and treat cancer. Our specialists are leaders in biomedical research and in translating the latest research to advance the standard of cancer care worldwide.
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