J. Gordon McVie, MD, DSc, Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, an innovative leader of several international cancer organizations, died January 20, 2021, at the age of 76.
McVie was born in Glasgow, Scotland, on January 13, 1945. He earned his degrees in science and medicine from the University of Edinburgh. In 1975, he became a senior lecturer at the Cancer Research Campaign Oncology Unit at the University of Glasgow.
From 1980 to 1989, McVie was the clinical research director at the Netherlands Cancer Institute. He also spent time as a consultant in oncology at the Antoni van Leewenhoek hospital in Amsterdam.
McVie served as president of the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) between 1994 and 1997. During his presidency, he helped launch the Drug Development Group in Brussels and the European New Drug Development Network.
From 1996 to 2002, McVie served as director general of the Cancer Research Campaign (CRC) in England. Under his leadership, more than 60 new drugs progressed to clinical trials. He also helped develop the Clinical Trials Network, which helped patients who were not responding to existing cancer treatments gain access to clinical trials. In 2002, McVie presided over CRC’s merger with the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, which created Cancer Research UK (CRUK), the largest cancer charity in the United Kingdom. He was a founding member of the National Cancer Research Institute.
In 2007, McVie cofounded ecancer, an open-access online platform for cancer research news. In recent years, he consulted or served on the boards of several other organizations, including Ellipses Pharma, the European Institute of Oncology, and IFOM-FIRC Institute of Molecular Oncology in Milan, Italy. Throughout his career, he championed the multidisciplinary nature of cancer research and worked to build collaborations between organizations around the world.
McVie joined the AACR as a Corresponding member in 1984 and transferred to Emeritus membership in 2011. He served on several AACR committees, including the Joseph H. Burchenal AACR Award Committee in 2002-2003 and the International Affairs Committee from 2002 to 2005.
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