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The Marks of Clinical and
Research Excellence
20 ColumbiaMedicine Spring 2012
age-related muscle strength loss. “At this point we each know
a lot about what is going on in each other’s laboratories,”
Andrew says.
Although the Marks family has made an impact in medicine,
it started from humble beginnings. Paul was born in a Pennsylvania
coal mining town and after his mother died when he was 5,
he moved to his father’s parents’ modest apartment in Brooklyn.
He went to Columbia University on a scholarship, graduating
in 1946. In 1949, he graduated first in his class at P&S and did
his residency in medicine at Presbyterian Hospital. Paul Marks
says he learned about “creativity in science” and “performing at
and identifying the highest standards in research” from his postdoctoral
fellowship with Nobel Laureate Arthur Kornberg at the
NIH from 1953 to 1955 and from a visiting scientist position
with Nobelist Jacques Monod at the Pasteur Institute in 1961-62.
“I was very lucky in my training,” Paul Marks recalls.
“Monod was particularly demanding. If he thought you were
good, the sky was the limit. Luckily, he thought I was good.
Living with those standards every day you soon begin to see
the scientists who were brilliant, those who were so-so, and
those who were not so good.”
Returning to Columbia in 1956, he studied globin genes
and genetically determined anemias and thalassemias.
By 1967, Marks became the founding chair of the new Department
of Human Genetics and Development at P&S. He was
appointed dean of the Faculty of Medicine in 1970, “a job I
Andrew Marks credits his father’s steel
backbone and passion about medicine and
science for influencing his career choice.
took with trepidation, since I always considered myself a scientist
first.” In 1973, he became vice president of health sciences
and director of the Cancer Research Center, which he helped
found in 1972 as principal investigator on an application for
National Cancer Institute funding. The center received comprehensive
designation in 1979 and today — as the Herbert
Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center — remains one of the
elite NCI-designated cancer centers.
“One of the major issues in leadership,” Paul Marks says,
“is identifying talented faculty, and it was what I most liked to
do as an administrator.” Two accomplishments he cites from
his leadership at P&S are recruiting Eric Kandel, M.D., and
persuading Richard Axel, M.D., to stay at Columbia. Both
subsequently won Nobel Prizes.
To have a major management role in cancer clinical care and
research ultimately drew the senior Marks to Memorial Sloan-
Kettering Cancer Center in 1980, where he became president
and CEO of the newly merged institution. Of his achievements
there – many of which challenged orthodoxy at the time – he
is proudest of ushering MSKCC into the age of molecular biology
and creating the first psychiatry department, pain service,
free-standing breast cancer center, and adult day chemotherapy
outpatient program at a cancer facility. MSKCC also was
an early adopter of digital medical records.
“One thing I learned as an administrator and researcher is
that if anything new is proposed, someone will oppose it,” Paul
Marks says. “If it’s really new, many, many people oppose it.”
This was reflected in a 1987 New York Times magazine article
examining Dr. Marks’ transformation of MSKCC.
Although he retired as president emeritus in 1999, Paul Marks
and his laboratory at MSKCC continue the SAHA research. He
and colleagues first developed suberoylanilide hydroxamic acid,
or SAHA, in 1987 as a small synthetic molecule that mimicked
the action of the chemical solvent DMSO. In the 1970s, DMSO
was shown to interact with globin genes in certain leukemic cells
to stop their growth by turning them into red blood cells. The
finding, at the time, revealed other ways to stop cells from being
cancerous besides killing them. SAHA, by inhibiting the HDAC
enzyme and other still unknown mechanisms, can make cancer
cells non-malignant or can kill them.
Andrew Marks credits his father’s steel backbone and passion
about medicine and science for influencing his career
choice. As did his mother Joan’s work: She established the
genetic counseling program at Sarah Lawrence College. “I
grew up with a love of science and familiarity with its lifestyle
and culture,” Andrew Marks says. “There were always scientists
around the house and at dinner.” But he says he had to
work hard to get his busy professional parents’ respect. “After
I got into the National Academy of Sciences [in 2005, a year
after he was elected to the Institute of Medicine],” Andrew
Marks says, “I joked with my parents, asking them whether
I had finally earned the right to sit at the grown-ups table at
Thanksgiving.” His daughter, Sarah, now hopes to join the
family legacy; she plans to apply to medical school.
It was not a foregone conclusion, though, that son Andrew
would pursue medicine or research. He graduated from
Amherst with a double major in biology and English and
was the first student there to achieve honors in two subjects.
He considered becoming a journalist and spent a summer at
the Wall Street Journal as a reporter after winning a Dow
Jones award for his college newspaper journalism. He opted
for medicine and research because journalism, he says, often
involves uncovering others’ mistakes, while science is more
positive as it prizes the discovery of new things. He obtained
his medical degree from Harvard in 1980 and did his residency
in medicine and fellowship in cardiology at the Massachusetts
General Hospital then completed a postdoctoral fellowship in
molecular biology there. After faculty appointments in cardiology
at Harvard and Mount Sinai School of Medicine, he joined
P&S in 1997 as director of the Center for Molecular Cardiology
and the Clyde and Helen Wu Professor of Medicine and