Cancer research This article is more than 2 years oldObituaryAndrew Thomson obituary
This article is more than 2 years oldChemist who made a breakthrough in developing the anti-cancer drug cisplatin and brought about advances in spectroscopyAndrew Thomson, who has died aged 80 after a stroke, played a crucial role early in his career in the discovery of a widely used anti-cancer drug, cisplatin, before going on to do pioneering work in the field of spectroscopy, enhancing our understanding of the functioning of substances vital to life, such as haemoglobin.
As an Oxford research chemist with a background in platinum chemistry, in 1967 Andrew was invited to Michigan State University by a group of biophysicists who had found that passing an electric current, using platinum electrodes, through a culture of the bacterium E coli had an inhibiting effect on the cell replication. They needed a chemist to determine the active substance. Andrew solved their problem by suggesting and synthesising two potential inhibitors and identifying the active one – now known as cisplatin.
Subsequent development of therapies based on cisplatin made it one of the most effective cancer treatments, especially for testicular cancer, and it remains widely used to this day. Despite Andrew’s part in the development of cisplatin, his name was not included on the patent granted in 1979. Consequently, neither Andrew personally nor his research benefited financially from the many millions of dollars that the patent earned.
The extraordinary success of the cisplatin work did not dent Andrew’s early determination, strengthened by his experience in the laboratory of RJP Williams at Oxford University, to research how the metal atoms in metalloproteins such as haemoglobin and cytochrome c play their vital role in living organisms.
Thus, on returning to the UK in 1967, though he continued to work on anti-cancer drugs, his main focus turned to the spectroscopy of metalloproteins, in particular a method called magnetic circular dichroism (MCD).
In MCD, a sample is subjected to a very large magnetic field and its spectrum measured using circularly polarised light. It is especially useful when the molecule contains elements that have more than one possible electronic arrangement, as is the case with metalloproteins. The magnetic field affects the two states differently and splits them apart energetically. Transition metal elements such as iron, copper and cobalt are typically found in the active centres of metalloproteins and, by changing their electronic arrangements to accept or give away electrons, they enable vital chemical reactions to proceed.
In order to focus on this research, Andrew applied for the post of senior demonstrator in the school of chemistry at the University of East Anglia, which had the required measuring instruments, dichrographs. After the initial difficulties of finding the funds to buy a superconducting magnet, necessary for his experiments, and a superior dichrograph that could cope with it, Andrew made rapid progress. He constructed a spectrometer capable of making MCD spectra measurements at longer wavelengths than the commercially available instruments, and joined forces with Colin Greenwood of the school of biological sciences to found the Centre for Metalloprotein Spectroscopy and Biology (now the Centre for Molecular and Structural Biochemistry) in 1988, one of the first multidisciplinary research centres in the UK.
As the work progressed it became clear that MCD spectra measured at temperatures close to the absolute zero would provide additional information. This is especially true with many transition metals, where at room temperature the effect of the splitting of the electronic states is scarcely noticeable, but at very low temperatures it becomes large. Accordingly Andrew proposed freezing biological samples in concentrated sugar solutions and isolating inorganic materials in solid inert gas matrices – matrix isolation. The successful development and application of these two techniques in MCD spectroscopy were revolutionary and widely copied.
Another innovation of Andrew’s was the novel experiment ODMR (optically detected magnetic resonance), for which he designed and constructed equipment, enabling the results of two completely different spectroscopic methods, EPR (electron paramagnetic resonance) and MCD, to be linked and interpreted together. This pioneering work led to the establishment of the Henry Wellcome Unit for Biological EPR Spectroscopy at UEA in the early 2000s.
Born in Steyning, West Sussex, Andrew was the second child of Andrew Thomson, a pharmacist, and Eva (nee Moss), and attended Steyning grammar school. In 1960 he went to Wadham College, Oxford, to study chemistry and continued working with Williams, his undergraduate tutor, for a DPhil, which he completed in 1965. The following year he interrupted his work in the US to return briefly to the UK to marry Anne Marsden, then a civil servant, whom he had met in Oxford. She later became a philosopher and academic.
His achievements in research were recognised by numerous prizes and awards, and he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1993.
In the later years of his career he became increasingly involved in management. As head of the school of chemistry, he oversaw its achievement of the top grade in the research assessment of universities, and established a school of pharmacy at UEA. He played an important role in the discussions leading to the establishment, in 1992, of the Norwich Research Park, one of the largest single-site concentrations of research in food, genomics, and health in Europe, and in 2004 he became the first dean of the science faculty. He was appointed OBE in 2008.
The most sociable of men, Andrew had a large circle of friends and enjoyed dancing and singing. He was always generous in attributing a project’s success to his co-workers and never openly critical of the work of others, and remained loyal to UEA until, and indeed after, his retirement in 2008.
Andrew approached retirement with the enthusiasm that had characterised his academic career, taking up gardening, choral singing and, with Anne, travelling, hiking and ballroom dancing. In their early 70s they hiked the Routeburn track in New Zealand, and had an Argentine tango lesson in Buenos Aires during a trip that also took in Chile.
Andrew is survived by Anne, their sons, Mark and Neil, and four grandchildren, Ella, Lilia, Freya and Nikolas.
Andrew James Thomson, biochemist, born 31 July 1940; died 2 March 2021
Explore more on these topicsShareReuse this contentncG1vNJzZmivp6x7tbTEoKyaqpSerq96wqikaKuTnrKvr8RoaWlqYWS6osWOaWtomZ6Zv6bDjK2fqKWjpLtuu8Giq66Zoq4%3D