Thomas, E. Donnall (1920-2012), was an American physician who performed the first human bone-marrow transplant. Bone marrow is a soft, blood-forming tissue that fills the cavities of many bones. Thomas pioneered a technique by which patients with leukemia, a form of blood cancer, receive a healthy new supply of bone marrow after all their own marrow has been destroyed by powerful drugs or radiation. In 1990, Thomas shared the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine with another transplant pioneer, American surgeon Joseph E. Murray.
Edward Donnall Thomas was born in Mart, Texas. He earned B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Texas at Austin in 1941 and 1943, respectively, and an M.D. degree from Harvard Medical School in 1946. He served in the United States Army from 1948 to 1950, then completed his medical residency at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital (now Brigham and Women’s Hospital) in Boston. From 1955 to 1963, he practiced medicine at Mary Imogene Basset Hospital in Cooperstown, New York. He performed the first human bone-marrow transplant there in 1956, between identical twins.
In 1963, Thomas moved to Seattle to continue his transplant research at the Seattle Public Health Hospital. He also taught at the University of Washington School of Medicine, heading the Division of Oncology (the branch of medicine dealing with tumors) from 1963 to 1985.
At first, the only successful marrow transplants involved identical twins, who share the same genes and thus have tissue types that match perfectly. Gradually, Thomas learned to match tissue types between nontwin donors and to use drugs to keep the transplanted marrow cells from attacking the patient’s other tissues. He performed one of the first successful bone-marrow transplants on a patient without an identical twin in 1970.
From 1974 to 1989, Thomas served as director of medical oncology at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. At the center, he developed the world’s largest bone-marrow transplant unit. Marrow transplants are now standard treatment for leukemia and certain other cancers and blood disorders, enabling doctors to cure many patients who would otherwise have died. Thomas died on Oct. 20, 2012.
