Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
12.8 PersonalTouch
The road to the development of Doxil
®
involved many people;
most of them became my personal friends with whom I interacted
for many years. This story started in 1984 when I met Dimitri
Papahadjopoulos from the University of California, San Francisco
(UCSF), a long-time friend and colleague “liposomologist.” We had
met at various conferences since 1974, when I was on an extended
sabbatical (1973-1976) at the Department of Biochemistry of the
University of Virginia (UVA) Medical School, at Charlottesville,
VA. The reason for me to come to UVA for sabbatical was that this
department, headed by Thomas Thompson, was one of the world
centers (and considered a Mecca) of membrane and liposome
biophysical research. Thomas Thompson and other scientists of
UVA, especially Chien Chien Huang and Burt Litman, were leading
membrane and liposome physical chemists. An important part of
my Ph.D. research was carried out in 1969 at the Animal Research
Council (ARC) Institute at Babraham near Cambridge, UK, under
the supervision of Rex Dawson and Peter Quinn, from whom I
learned about lipid monolayers at the air/water interface, and Alec
Bangham, who introduced me to liposomes. I believed that lipid and
membrane physical chemistry are crucial to membrane research,
and that is why I decided to spend my first sabbatical at UVA. The
UVA group was in tight competition with the UCSF group although
the interests of the two groups were only partially overlapping, as
the UVA focused on lipid biophysics and physical chemistry and the
UCSF group focused more on biologically relevant topics such as
fusion, interaction of liposomes with cells, etc. Every time Dimitri
and I met, we talked extensively about science (mainly membrane
and liposome research), as well as on culture, art, history, food, and
wine. Dimitri kept telling me about Liposome Technology Inc. (LTI)
a start-up located at Menlo Park, CA, which focuses its R&D in the
field of liposome-based diagnostic and medical applications. Dimitri
and his former student Frank Szoka were the scientific founders and
mentors of this company. Nick Arvanitidis was convinced by Dimitri
to be LTI CEO, and Frank Martin, another student of Dimitri's, was
the first LTI employee. Nick brought with him Sally Davenport , Carl
Grove, and Kathy, who had worked in Nick's previous R&D company,
to deal with LTI administration. Dimitri asked me if I would be
interested to spend a sabbatical at LTI. He told me that it is a great
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