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This book is dedicated to the late Philippe Shubik,
who was instrumental in the development of the
hamster pancreatic cancer model.
Dr. Shubik was the former director of the Eppley
Institute for Research in Cancer and Allied
Diseases in Omaha, Nebraska. He had an
exceptional international reputation in
experimental cancer research and a spectacular
career, from medical officer to the Royal
Household at Balmoral to director of a military
hospital in India. Upon discharge from the army,
he began to do research at the Sir William Dunn
School of Pathology in Oxford, under the
influence of Howard (later Lord) Florey and Isaac
Berenblum, his DPhil supervisor. Together, they
developed the fundamentally important ‘twostage’
theory of carcinogenesis. Upon completion
of his thesis Shubik decided that his future lay in
America. In June 1949 he moved from Oxford to
the United States, and having turned down an
offer from the Sloan-Kettering Institute he settled
on a post at Northwestern University Medical
School. In Chicago he rapidly climbed the career
ladder and by 1966 he was a professor of
Oncology and the director of the Chicago Medical
School Institute of Medical Research.
In 1968 he changed course and accepted the
directorship of the Eppley Institute for Cancer
Research in Omaha, Nebraska. He built the
Eppley Institute into one of the country’s leading,
freestanding cancer research institutes. He was a
consultant to the director of the National Cancer
Institute from 1966-1975 and a member of the
National Cancer Advisory Board from 1970
until1982. He served on committees on cancer for
the National Academy of Sciences, chaired the
International Union against Cancer Committee on
Environmental Carcinogens, and was a member
of the Board of Directors of the American
Association for Cancer Research for more than 25
years. He played a pivotal role as an advisor to
the World Health Organization when they
established the International Agency on Cancer
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monograph program in Lyon, France in 1970.
Over time, he was on the editorial board of eight
journals and was the founding editor of Cancer
Letters. At the last count he was, or had been, a
fellow or member of 17 scientific societies and
served on more than 30 committees. He was a
long-serving member of the National Cancer
Advisory Board and its subcommittees and on a
U.S. President’s Advisory Committee on Cancer.
One of the journalist members of this committee
has since written “Shubik was the most
fascinating scientist that I ever met.”
With his connections to so many research
institutions and health departments, he was able
to recruit a number of talented and experienced
researchers to work at the Eppley Institute.
Shubik was a contractor with the National Cancer
Institute and had relationships with many major
pharmaceutical companies. This also ensured his
ability to recruit the finest researchers and provide
the best equipment available.
Shubik’s view on multidisciplinary research was,
in many ways, ahead of its time. He believed
collaboration across the sciences would provide
the first step in understanding cancer. Therefore,
he recruited experts in chemistry, analytical
chemistry, cellular biology, virology, nutrition,
pathology (including scanning and electron
microscopy) and epidemiology. Against the
objection of some administrators at the NCI,
Shubik also engaged in collaborative work with
pharmaceutical industries. These companies
financed the research and also provided
additional expertise and insight. (This
collaboration, however, was used by his
opponents against him in later years). He trained
several researchers who eventually assumed top
positions in the U.S. or elsewhere. For example,
Umberto Saffioti, a leading scientist in respiratory
tract carcinogenesis, served as the director of the
NCI. Ruggero Montesano became the director of
the World Health Organization (WHO).