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Sydney E. Salmon³

University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas; Dana-Farber Cancer Center, Boston, Massachusetts, Arkansas Cancer Research Center, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Little Rock, Arkansas; University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California; Moffitt Cancer Center, Tampa, Florida and Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota

Cancer research lost an eminent scientist, clinician, and educator when Sydney E. Salmon, M.D., died on October 6, 1999 at the age of 63 years after a long battle with pancreatic cancer.

Born in Staten Island, New York, Dr. Salmon attended the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona, earning a B.A. in 1958; he received his M.D. from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri in 1962 and completed an internal medicine residency in Rochester, New York. After research fellowships in immunology at Harvard and the University of California at San Francisco, he returned to the University of Arizona at Tucson in 1972 as the first Director of Hematology and Oncology. His vision of multimodality-based cancer therapy in the context of basic cancer research and education led to the establishment, by the Arizona Board of Regents, of the Arizona Cancer Center in 1976, and Dr. Salmon was named as its Director. The center received National Cancer Institute designation as a comprehensive cancer center in 1978.

Dr. Salmon’s research contributions are reflected in more than 400 publications in leading medical journals. His most widely acknowledged contributions include the calculation of cancer cell mass in myeloma with the derivation of the first clinical staging system, the development of an in vitro human tumor stem cell assay for studying drug effects, the recognition of different mechanisms of drug resistance in myeloma, and the conduct of cooperative trial research under the auspices of the SWOG.¹ He developed the first quantitative method for evaluating changes in myeloma tumor mass, thereby defining primary resistance, remission, and relapse among the diverse phases of myeloma in individual patients.

Dr. Salmon’s contributions to cancer research have been acknowledged on many occasions, especially by his service as president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (1984–1985) and of the Association of American Cancer Institutes (1988–1989) and by his presidential appointment to the National Cancer Advisory Board (1990–1996). Dr. Salmon was also honored by receipt of the Waldenström Award for Myeloma Research in 1993 and the Jeffrey A. Gottlieb Award for Cancer Research from The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in 1998.

Dr. Salmon has trained many scientists and physicians, most notably Ron Buick (Ontario Cancer Institute, Toronto, Canada); Anne Hamburger (University of Maryland, Baltimore, MD); Jeffrey Trent (National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, MD); Frank Meyskens (University of California at Irvine, Irvine, CA); Brian Durie (University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA); William Dalton (Moffitt Cancer Center, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL); Scott Lippman (University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX); his personal physician, David Alberts (University of Arizona Cancer Center, Tucson, AZ); and his successor as Director of the Arizona Cancer Center, Daniel Von Hoff.

In recognition of Dr. Salmon’s more than 20 years of leadership and his high standards of research in the SWOG, the SWOG Chair of the Myeloma Committee will be named in his honor.

Dr. Salmon is survived by his wife of 41 years, Joan Salmon; his children, Howard Salmon, Dr. Julie Salmon, Laura Levine, Russell Salmon, and Stewart Salmon; three grandchildren; and his brother, Norman Salmon. The myeloma investigative community and myeloma patients will miss Dr. Salmon’s intellectual brilliance and judgement, his mentorship and guidance, and, most of all, his friendship.

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¹ The abbreviation used is: SWOG, Southwest Oncology Group.

² To whom requests for reprints should be addressed.

³ For the myeloma scientific community

Received 10/19/99; accepted 10/26/99.

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