Robert Tod Schimke (October 25, 1932 – September 6, 2014) was an American biochemist and cancer researcher. He was born in

Spokane, Washington Spokane ( ) is the largest city and county seat of Spokane County, Washington, United States. It is in eastern Washington, along the Spokane River, adjacent to the Selkirk Mountains, and west of the Rocky Mountain foothills, south of the Canada ...

, the son of a dentist and a homemaker. Schimke obtained an undergraduate degree from

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

in 1954, and an MD degree in 1958. From 1958 to 1960 he performed internship and residency training at

Massachusetts General Hospital Massachusetts General Hospital (Mass General or MGH) is the original and largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School located in the West End neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. It is the third oldest general hospital in the United Stat ...

. From 1960 to 1966 he served in the

Public Health Service In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociological concept of the ''Öffentlichkei ...

at the

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the late ...

, where he worked on the way dietary changes affect the enzymes controlling the urea cycle in rats. In 1966 he returned to Stanford, where from 1969 to 1972 he was on the board of the Faculty of Pharmacology, and from 1978 to 1982 he was chairman of the Department of Biology. At Stanford he examined the effects of steroid hormones on the synthesis of certain proteins, leading to new techniques in genetic engineering. In 1977, he (and doctoral student Fred Alt) discovered the phenomenon of

gene amplification Gene amplification refers to a number of natural and artificial processes by which the number of copies of a gene is increased "without a proportional increase in other genes". Artificial DNA amplification In research or diagnosis DNA amplificati ...

in mammalian cells. This discovery had great importance for cancer research, for example, in understanding the genetic instability of cancer cells and the mechanisms by which cancer cells can resist chemotherapy. The mechanism also found applications in biotechnology, for example in the production of proteins, including

erythropoietin Erythropoietin (; EPO), also known as erythropoetin, haematopoietin, or haemopoietin, is a glycoprotein cytokine secreted mainly by the kidneys in response to cellular hypoxia; it stimulates red blood cell production (erythropoiesis) in the bo ...

, of which he helped to develop a commercial version. Later he studied regulatory mechanisms in the cells, including the regulation of

apoptosis Apoptosis (from grc, ἀπόπτωσις, apóptōsis, 'falling off') is a form of programmed cell death that occurs in multicellular organisms. Biochemical events lead to characteristic cell changes (morphology) and death. These changes incl ...

. He was a Research Professor of the American Cancer Society and later Professor Emeritus at Stanford. In 1985, he received the

Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. Prize The Alfred P. Sloan Jr. Prize was a $250,000 award given by the General Motors Cancer Research Foundation for outstanding oncological research. The prize was awarded annually from 1979 to 2005. Of the winners, 15 out of 37 have gone on to win eith ...

for Cancer Research. He was a member of the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...

, the

Institute of Medicine The National Academy of Medicine (NAM), formerly called the Institute of Medicine (IoM) until 2015, is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Medicine is a part of the National Academies of Sciences, E ...

, and the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and ...

. He was president of the

American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB) is a learned society that was founded on December 26, 1906, at a meeting organized by John Jacob Abel (Johns Hopkins University). The roots of the society were in the American Phy ...

. In 1995, Schimke was injured when a car struck the bicycle he was riding. He recovered, but needed to use a wheelchair for the rest of his life. After the accident, he focused on his art, particularly painting. In 2009, the Stanford School of Medicine recognized his many contributions with the J. E. Wallace Sterling Lifetime Achievement Award.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Schimke, Robert 1932 births 2014 deaths American biochemists Cancer researchers Stanford University alumni Stanford University Department of Biology faculty Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Members of the National Academy of Medicine