Pioneer Gene Therapist, Noted Surgeon to Join USC : Education: Dr. W. French Anderson will continue research in L.A. His wife will also hold Childrens Hospital post.
In a move that is widely perceived as a coup for USC, a pioneer in the emerging field of human gene therapy and his wife, a highly regarded pediatric surgeon, will join the school this fall.
Dr. W. French Anderson, a molecular biologist who was the first U.S. scientist to conduct approved gene therapy for the treatment of genetic disorders, will move his research program to the university’s Kenneth J. Norris Jr. Comprehensive Cancer Center in September.
Dr. Kathryn D. Anderson, a widely respected pediatric surgeon, will become surgeon-in-chief and vice president for surgical administration at Childrens Hospital of Los Angeles, as well as a professor of surgery at USC.
“In addition to her surgical skills, Kathy Anderson is the type of person who builds teams and provides visionary leadership,” said Dr. Stephen Ryan, dean of the USC School of Medicine. “We’re very pleased to have her--and as a bonus we get French Anderson too.”
In September, 1990, French Anderson inaugurated the age of human gene therapy by treating a 4-year-old girl, who had a rare inherited immune disorder, with white blood cells that had been taken from her body and genetically altered to produce a missing enzyme. The girl is now healthy enough to attend kindergarten and be exposed to normal childhood diseases.
Anderson’s intimacy with the intricacies of the Washington bureaucracy, as well as his scientific insights, have been widely credited with making human gene therapy politically feasible. His ability to shepherd his own research proposals through labyrinthine regulatory procedures helped clear the way for experiments by other researchers.
Most colleagues--and Anderson himself--had assumed that he would finish his career at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., where he has spent the last 27 years. “I’m loyal to NIH,” he said. “My intention was always to die at the bench in my 80s here on the seventh floor” of the NIH’s Building 10.
That situation changed when Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, where Kathryn Anderson has been vice-chairman of surgery for 10 years and acting chairman for the last year, began searching for a new chairman. The search committee nominated “three white males” for the post, French Anderson said, and the center ultimately hired Dr. Marshall Schwartz of UC Davis.
“Disappointed” by the committee’s decision, he said, “I told her to find a better job and I would go with her. . . . Kathy subordinated her career to mine for 31 years. It’s her turn.”
Coincidentally, Childrens Hospital in Los Angeles--which is consistently ranked as one of the top three pediatric hospitals in the country--had been searching for a new surgeon-in-chief for more than two years and “Kathy Anderson was at the top of the list of candidates,” Ryan said.
French Anderson will continue overseeing his NIH treatment program on a volunteer basis for the next year, he said, and will begin treating new patients in Los Angeles. He also is working to develop new tools for gene therapy “so that we can treat millions of people rather than hundreds.”
He said his research at USC will be funded through a “multi-year, multimillion-dollar” grant from Genetic Therapy Inc. of Gaithersburg, Md. He helped found the company, which is using patents he obtained at the NIH, but because of government regulations he has no financial stake in it.
