He founded the field of angiogenesis research, which has led to the discovery of a number of therapies based on inhibiting or stimulating neovascularization.
[2] Born in 1933 in Cleveland, Ohio, Judah Folkman accompanied his father, a rabbi, on visits to hospital patients.
By age seven, he knew he wanted to be a doctor rather than follow in his father's footsteps, so he could offer cures in addition to comfort.
During that time, he studied the use of silastic for the sustained release of lipophilic drugs; the 1964 publication of that work helped inspire the technological development of the Norplant implantable contraceptive at the Population Council.
[4][5] Robert Langer worked as a postdoc in Folkman's lab during this time, concentrating on using silastic and other materials to deliver drugs.
[5][11] In 1991 Michael O"Reilly, working in the Folkman lab with Entremed funding, discovered the first endogenous angiogenesis inhibitor, angiostatin and then another, endostatin.
Entremed began developing them and soon struck a collaboration with Bristol-Myers, which caught national interest and spurred further investment in angiogenesis inhibitors by other pharma companies.
[14][15] Around that time, the wife of a man who was dying of multiple myeloma and whom standard treatments had failed, called Folkman asking him about his anti-angiogenesis ideas.
[3] After further work was done by Celgene and others, in 2006 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted accelerated approval for thalidomide in combination with dexamethasone for the treatment of newly diagnosed multiple myeloma patients.
On May 29, 1998, Folkman received an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Medicine at Uppsala University, Sweden[24] Folkman died of a heart attack in Denver on January 14, 2008, at the age of 74 en route to deliver the 2008 Keynote Address at the Keystone Symposium (Molecular Mechanisms of Angiogenesis in Development and Disease) in Vancouver, British Columbia.