Dr. Jerome P. Horwitz

The women in his life inspire him to keep looking for drugs to fight cancer

    Jerome P. Horwitz is a worried man, but his fretting has spurred medical breakthroughs that benefit others.
    He’s dedicated his life to developing drugs to battle cancer.

    Horwitz, a biochemist, is a leading researcher at Detroit’s Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute, a research arm of Wayne State University Medical School.

    At 82, this native Detroiter has been in hot pursuit of anti-cancer weapons for nearly half a century, developing several cancer drugs now in use and, in the course of his research, also discovering AZT and two other AIDS drugs in the 1960s. Unfortunately, because the three AIDS drugs had no use at the time, they were shelved without patents, so he never reaped their financial rewards.

    And he persists, still working full-time as head of a 12-person research team developing a new cancer drug that targets solid tumors. With the help of a $1 million grant from the National Cancer Institute, the drug is headed for its first clinical trials in June.

    That won’t be his last hurrah, either. He and researchers at four other institutions are sharing in a five-year, $900,000 grant, also from the National Cancer Institute, to look for anti-cancer substances in plant and marine life.

    “I don’t entertain illusions about a cancer cure,” says Horwitz, a small-framed man tucked behind his desk at the Meyer L. Prentis Building next to the Karmanos Institute. “The idea is to turn cancer into a chronic disease like Parkinson’s or diabetes. What is important is to extend life and maintain a decent quality of life.”

    Although he jokes that he continues on the job because he’s afraid his wife will send him grocery shopping, that’s not the reason.

    “The work continues to excite me,” Horwitz says.

    Indeed, Gloria Heppner, deputy director of the Karmanos Institute, who calls Horwitz a giant in cancer chemotherapy, says: “He’s as competitive as a brand-new kid just getting his degree.”

    Horwitz’ passion for research started at age 9 or 10, when he read Paul de Kruif’s classic Microbe Hunters, about famous scientists such as Louis Pasteur and Walter Reed.

    “A light bulb went on,” Horwitz says. “I knew what I wanted to do.”

    He went on to Detroit’s Central High School, the University of Detroit for bachelor’s and master’s degrees and then to the University of Michigan for his Ph.D. in organic chemistry. He also did post-graduate work at U-M and Northwestern University, and taught at Illinois Institute of Technology in the early 1950s.

    In 1956, he returned to Detroit to join the staff at what was then the Detroit Institute of Cancer Research.

    “I went into this work with a certain amount of naivete,” he says. “I welcomed the challenge of bringing my research to bear on an insoluble problem. I thought, ‘I’m going to really do something here.’ Now, 50 years later, I know it’s easier said than done.”

    Outside the lab, Horwitz enjoys listening to classical music and for 35 years sang tenor in the choir at Congregation B’Nai Moshe in West Bloomfield Township.

    He and his wife, Sharon, who live in Farmington Hills, will celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary in June. They have two daughters, Carol Kaston and Suzie Gross, and five grandchildren.

    The women in his family are one of the reasons he works so tirelessly.

    Because of them, he says, “The one thing I want to do before I’m through is find something that works against breast cancer.”

   

— Barbara Hoover