s a young scientist taking classes at Harvard University, Dean Pascal J. Goldschmidt, M.D., would attend any lecture given by Judah Folkman, M.D., no matter what the subject. So when Goldschmidt welcomed the surgeon-scientist to the Miller School to accept the Lois Pope LIFE International Research Award, he joked, “I hope he’ll give a lecture on appendicitis—it was the one lecture I missed.”

The ninth annual Lois Pope LIFE International Research Award was awarded on March 6 to Folkman, the Andrus Professor of Pediatric Surgery and professor of cell biology at Harvard Medical School and director of the Vascular Biology Program at Children’s Hospital Boston. He is the first non-Miller School faculty member to receive the award in four years. And for the first time in six years, University President Donna E. Shalala was not in attendance at the presentation of the award. She had a good excuse: Shalala was called to Washington along with former U.S. Senator Bob Dole to head a presidential commission to examine problems at veterans and military medical care facilities across the country, a cause that is championed by Pope, the co-founder of the Disabled Veterans’ LIFE Memorial Foundation.

Folkman, considered the founder of the field of angiogenesis research in the treatment of cancer, has opened a field of investigation now pursued worldwide and in many other disease processes.

In 1971 Folkman hypothesized that solid tumors are angiogenesis dependent, or rely on blood supply to grow, and he initiated studies of the process in tumor biology. His laboratory reported the first purified angiogenesis molecule and the first angiogenesis inhibitor. There are now ten approved in the United States by the Food and Drug Administration, and several angiogenesis inhibitors have been approved in other countries for the treatment of cancer and macular degeneration.

“LIFE stands for Leaders in Furthering Education,” says Folkman. “I interpret the award to be about two types of medical education: what we teach in medical school and continuing education to diminish patients’ pain. I am grateful to the Lois Pope LIFE Foundation for putting their imprimatur on the care of the sick and relieving their suffering.”