Written by ISCRM Faculty Member Marshall Horwitz
Genetics and Genome Sciences Emeritus Professor Stanley Gartler passed away peacefully last week at the age of 102.
After closing his own laboratory, Stan joined mine. A few years later, when the Institute for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine opened at South Lake Union in 2007, he moved with our group from the Health Sciences Building to the new facility. By then he was already in his mid-80s, yet he maintained a regular schedule and remained one of the hardest-working members of the lab. He was certainly the most creative. More importantly, he was an inspiration to everyone around him—not only because of his world-class science or his remarkable vigor at an advanced age, but because of his humility, warmth, genuine concern for others, and enduring sense of curiosity and wonder. He continued active research into his mid-90s.
Over the course of a career spanning more than seven decades, Stan made numerous fundamental discoveries, trained generations of scientists, mentored students and postdoctoral fellows, including in my own laboratory, and collaborated widely across disciplines.
Among his many scientific contributions, the one I regard as most profound was his demonstration that cancer is a clonal disease arising from a single cell. Its impact on modern biology and medicine cannot be overstated. Although this concept is now taken for granted, prior to the publication of his landmark 1967 PNAS paper, many investigators believed that cancers arose from multiple cells.
In a stroke of brilliance, Stan studied women with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) who were heterozygous for variants of glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD), an enzyme encoded on the X chromosome. Because one X chromosome is randomly inactivated early in embryonic development, each cell expresses only one of the two G6PD variants, creating a natural lineage marker. Stan showed that leukemia cells from individual patients expressed only a single G6PD variant, providing compelling evidence that the cancer originated from a single ancestral cell.
That paper remains remarkable for several reasons. Although Stan conceived and led the work, his name appears in the middle of the three authors, between Philip Fialkow—who would later become Dean of the University of Washington School of Medicine—and Akira Yoshida. I can only speculate that Stan willingly relinquished a more prominent authorship position to advance the careers of his colleagues and trainees. Equally striking is the paper’s simplicity. One of the most influential studies in cancer biology consisted of a single figure: a protein gel with only five lanes, two of which were the same control. It stands as a reminder that transformative discoveries often emerge from elegant experiments and careful observation rather than complexity.
The study is also notable from a modern perspective. Its title, “Clonal Origin of Chronic Myelocytic Leukemia in Man,” belies the fact that every participant was a woman. The subjects were Black women, selected because informative G6PD variants occur at higher frequencies in populations of African ancestry. Their participation enabled a discovery that fundamentally changed our understanding of cancer and serves as a lasting reminder that inclusion in biomedical research can accelerate scientific progress.
Stan’s accomplishments outside the laboratory were equally extraordinary. He was a first-generation student in the fullest sense of the term—not merely the first in his family to attend college, but the first to receive what we would now recognize as a formal education. Like many Jewish immigrant families from the Pale of Settlement, his parents had limited educational opportunities. Stan grew up in Los Angeles, graduated from high school, and completed two years at UCLA before enlisting in the United States Army Air Forces during World War II.
He served as a tail gunner aboard a B-26 Marauder, courageously flying combat missions over Europe. As a member of what became known as the Greatest Generation, he helped defeat the Nazis and secure the freedoms that much of the world enjoys today.
Few people leave a legacy that spans both the battlefield and the laboratory. Stan did. He transformed our understanding of cancer, mentored generations of scientists, and enriched the lives of all who knew him. Those of us fortunate enough to work alongside him will remember not only his brilliance, but also his kindness, generosity, and unending curiosity about the world.