Samuel Broder spent his childhood in Poland, in a group of Jewish guerrillas threatened by the Nazis. He emigrated to the United States with a group of Polish survivors and settled with his parents in an industrial neighborhood in

Detroit Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at ...

, where they ran a snack bar that was razed to the ground during the riots in 1968 for the assassination of

Martin Luther King Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr.; January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister and activist, one of the most prominent leaders in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968 ...

. Broder didn’t like to work there, he had different goals. He thought that in science he could succeed without belonging to a high socioeconomic class, so he began to get good grades in science subjects and got a scholarship to

Michigan State University Michigan State University (Michigan State, MSU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in East Lansing, Michigan. It was founded in 1855 as the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan, the fi ...

. He was a co-developer of some of the first effective drugs for the treatment of AIDS and was Director of the

National Cancer Institute The National Cancer Institute (NCI) coordinates the United States National Cancer Program and is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is one of eleven agencies that are part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. T ...

(NCI) from 1989 to 1995. During the first years of the AIDS epidemic, he co-developed

zidovudine Zidovudine (ZDV), also known as azidothymidine (AZT), is an antiretroviral medication used to prevent and treat HIV/AIDS. It is generally recommended for use in combination with other antiretrovirals. It may be used to prevent mother-to-chil ...

(AZT),

didanosine Didanosine (ddI, DDI), sold under the brand name Videx, is a medication used to treat HIV/AIDS. It is used in combination with other medications as part of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART). It is of the reverse-transcriptase inhibito ...

(ddI), and

zalcitabine Zalcitabine (2′-3′-dideoxycytidine, ddC), also called dideoxycytidine, is a nucleoside analog reverse-transcriptase inhibitor (NRTI) sold under the trade name Hivid. Zalcitabine was the third antiretroviral to be approved by the Food and Drug A ...

(ddC), which were the first effective drugs licensed for the treatment of AIDS. In 1989, he was appointed by President Ronald Reagan to be Director of the NCI. In this position he oversaw the development of a number of new therapies for cancer including

paclitaxel Paclitaxel (PTX), sold under the brand name Taxol among others, is a chemotherapy medication used to treat a number of types of cancer. This includes ovarian cancer, esophageal cancer, breast cancer, lung cancer, Kaposi's sarcoma, cervical can ...

(Taxol). After leaving the NCI, Dr. Broder became Senior Vice President for Research and Development at the IVAX Corporation in Florida, a position he held until 1998 when he joined Celera Genomics. He is now Chief Medical Officer of Celera. He has received a number of honors for his work including the

Arthur S. Flemming Award The Arthur S. Flemming Award is an award given annually to employees of the United States federal government. More than 500 individuals have received the award since it was created in 1948. The Trachtenberg School of Public Policy & Public Admin ...

and the Leopold Griffuel Award.

References

External links

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Dr. Broder's Bio at Celera

American medical researchers Living people 1945 births Members of the National Academy of Medicine United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps admirals United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps officers United States Public Health Service personnel {{US-med-bio-stub