HMS Cancer Researcher Dies at 54

Hundreds packed the pews at Memorial Church yesterday to remember the life of Stanley J. Korsmeyer, a pioneer in the field of cancer research and a beloved professor at Harvard Medical School (HMS).

Korsmeyer passed away on March 31 after more than a year-long struggle with lung cancer. He was 54.

As director of the Program in Molecular Oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Korsmeyer was best known for his ground-breaking research in “programmed” cell death, or apoptosis.

Korsmeyer’s work involved the study of patients with human follicular B cell lymphoma. He discovered the Bcl-2 gene which prevents the natural death of cancer cells.

At the time of his passing, Korsmeyer and his colleagues were trying to manipulate apoptosis molecules to force cancer cells to self-destruct, according to a press release from the Dana-Farber Institute.

At yesterday’s service, former director of the Dana-Farber Institute and friend David Nathan said Korsmeyer’s “sacrifice and personal impact changed all of our lives.”

Korsmeyer received his M.D. in 1976 from the University of Illinois in Chicago. He served as chief of the Division of Molecular Oncology at the University of Washington and eventually joined the Dana-Farber Institute in 1998. He became a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator in 2000.

A non-smoker, Korsmeyer was diagnosed with lung cancer in the winter of 2004. According to Edward J. Benz Jr., Dana-Farber’s president, Korsmeyer continued working until just a week before his death.

During Korsmeyer’s illness, Benz said, “He had two priorities: his family and the people who worked for him.”

Nathan said Korsmeyer’s list of accomplishments is “simply too long to cite,” but they include election into the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Bristol-Meyers Squibb Award for Distinguished Achievement in Cancer Research.

According to his longtime friend and professor at the Washington University School of Medicine Timothy J. Ley, Korsmeyer published over 300 papers in scientific journals, and his work has been cited more than 46,000 times in other medical literature.

Described as an “omnivorous” worker, Korsmeyer was admired by many for his generous spirit and kindness.

Ley recalled their shared childhood in rural Illinois and the “principle of excellence” for which Korsmeyer stood, even as a child.

Ley recounted the story of a Korsmeyer family trip to the Corn Palace in South Dakota, where Korsmeyer, the son of a livestock farmer, spied a one-ton concrete pig. Korsmeyer, by then the father of two boys, shipped the pig home­­—“by ground, because pigs don’t fly”—and set it up in his yard as a “symbol of pride in his humble roots.”

After the story, which was greeted with familiar nods by the attentive audience, Reverend Mark D. W. Edington, Epps Fellow and Chaplain to Harvard College, spoke of the loss to the Harvard community, noting that Korsmeyer’s “quality of character was something that [Harvard] needed”.

“Stan was different,” said friend and colleague Stephen Sallan. “Uniformly, 100 percent loved by all of us.”

Korsmeyer is survived by his wife, Susan J. (Reynard) Korsmeyer, sons Jason Louis and Evan John Korsmeyer, and parents Willard and Carnell Korsmeyer.