...

GC:     So did you mainly work with Dr. Waldmann?

SB:      Yes ind eedindeed.

GC:     What did you start out doing? Did you come in and set up your own projects?  Were there things that you stepped into the middle of?

...

SB:      No, in that era I pretty much picked up projects that were ongoing. Dr. Waldmann offered oppprtunities to make modifications or do new projects, but it was pretty much an opportunity to participate in things that were already underway.

...

SB:      Well it was what my idea of real clinical investigation should be. There was a component of both clinical activities in what was then called Ward 3-8, and there was a component of  laboratory research.  And  basically the clinical associates were in charge of the patients  and  followed  them every  day, did  whatever medical procedures were necessary or what other medical care issues might be necessary. But then also there would be weekly attending rounds where patients were reviewed, progress was followed, ideas were developed, and so on. So it was a good mix of clinical and basic research, and a lot of very interesting things happened on that ward.

...

SB:      I definitely had an interest in cancer for a considerable period of time so that it was not a new development.

(

GC: What was it like as a young clinical associate at that time doing research?  Can you tell me about what kind of resources you had at your disposal or what the atmosphere in the service or on the branch was lik elike?

SB:     It was a good atmosphere. It was an atmosphere in which ideas were discussed. The idea of using the patient to guide the research activity to try to tie a clinical observation to a basic science observation is a very gratifying experience. It actually went against what the more official dogma is which is that basic science observations drive clinical research, and in a number of cases it 's really quite the opposite. Important observations at the bedside or from a clinical perspective can (                        drive the kinds of experiments and the kinds of hypotheses that are raised in the laboratory. Or sometimes the persistent and durable commitment to studying the disease can provide basic research continuity.

Ataxia telangiectasia was a very obscure disease, but then it became very fundamental.  And the  regulatory mechanisms  that are involved and the checkpoint functions of cell cycle regulation as those ideas emerged,  the correlation between oncogenes and certain  specific  translocations of chromosomes all came into play and all linked up with ataxia telangiectasia because it was an ongoing interaction, and that disease became very fundamental in a lot of the basic research of our era.

(

(

Then it became apparent that there were homologues of the ataxia telangiectasia gene that could be studied in various models, in yeast, in fruit flies, and other systems, and it became an important fundamental focal point for  understanding how cells regulate themselves, both in cancer and in other states and just in the physiology  of the cell regulation.  Because  what is now apparent  is that there are  a number of gateway or checkpoint functions that regulate the so-called G1/S interphase or the G-2/M interphase, and basically the abnormalities in ataxia telangiectasia are very critical. Response to radiation injury or other forms of genotoxic injury can be studied in that model and can be elegantly adapted from both a human level to yeast to fruit flies and vice versa, all synergizing into (                        providing very fundamental information.

...

But it's a synthesis of very disparate discipline s in one disease entity that would 've been difficult had there not been the continuity and the long-term commitment over decades of studying the patients, and then using the patients to teach what basic research observations might need to be done and then as new basic research opportunities were open, taking them back to studying the patients in a very elegant to and fro.

(

(            Samuel Broder Interview, July 3, 1997                                                                                         7

GC:        Was that unique at the time to  the NCI, or  the NIH, this kind of................... ?

...

SB:         I don't know if it was uniqu e. It was unique in my opinion in terms of its excellence and its capacity to have the same people move from both a clinical to a laboratory arena and vice versa. But I can't say that it was absolutely unique.

...

GC:     I noted that you moved from the Metabolism Branch over to the Medicine Branch for a year? Is that right?

SB:               That's co rrectcorrect.(

GC:      What was that move alI about?

SB:                   That move was to permit me to essentially become fully certified  in  oncology from a clinical point of view. So following that period, I was able to become certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine in medical oncology, and I think that added a certain capacity and capabili ty to my abili ty to contribute to the NIH.

...

GC:     And then you came back to the Metabolism Branch after that?(

SB:      I came back to the Metabolism Branch for a couple of more years, yes.

(

GC:     But this time you were a senior investigator.

...

SB:      Well, given the way the Metabolism Branch worked, from outward appearances there actually wouldn't be that much of a difference. From an admini strative point of view there was more work involved and there was management of budgets and responsibilities and so on, but there was a certain informality and(                         lack of attention to hierarchical structure in that branch that I think was unusual. So I wouldn't say it made no difference but  it  didn't make as much of  a difference as you might think.

...

SB:      Yes, I think it was. That kind of a structure requires some unusual components, and I can't say it can always ex ist. It requires certain personality types and a certain type of commonality of purpose and so on. It worked, but it might not work in every circumstance. It wouldn't work if there was an unusually

(

aggressive or greedy personality or something. But in that era, everybody pitched

(

in, everybody worked for a common good, and there was no need for an intensely hierarchical structure and the people worked very well without it.

...

SB:      I worked with Mike Blaese, I worked with Warren Strober, I worked with Jay Berzofsky, I worked with Dave Nelson, I worked with a number of people.

GC:            Would you consult each other on projects or questions that you had?

(               SB:      Sure.

GC:     So it sounds like when you came back as a senior investigator, that's when you started taking on administrative responsibilities?

...

SB:      Yes. In government you can't be sure what a title is. Titles are very misleading.

(

You can have a couple of diminutive titles but the person can still be the top

(              Samuel Broder Interview, July 3, 1997                                                                                     10

person, or vice versa. An assistant secretary for health, you don't know whether that's a big position or a little position. That position in the C.O.P. meant that I was in charge of the intramural and clinical oncology program, which was made up of several branches and was a very large operation.

...

SB:      Basically Vince DeVita and Bruce Chabner asked me to do it.

(            GC:            And that was something you were interested in doing or was it a ...                ? Was it an easy decision to move?

...

GC:     What kind of political type interactions?

Samuel Broder Interview, July 3, 1997                                                                                       11

(

SB:        Well, whenever you have important branches led by very brilliant people with grant standing and they have competing needs and they have to come to another

...

GC:     What was going on in Frederick at the time that you were director? How big was

that program?

(

(

.SB:      It was a very large program, the major commitment to biological response modifiers and there were other support services being done.

...

change your position or did it, I guess I should ask.

(

(

SB:     I think it did change the position very much in that I had developed a working relationship with most of the people in the Reagan and Bush administrations, and I think especially toward the very end had established what I intended to accomplish which was the independence of the NIH and the NCI intramural program and a certain very strong measure of respect. And a practical operational line of communication especially with Lou Su ll i van and others.

...

research program without any real attempt to adapt what might be doable.

(

I feel very happy about the role that my life played in helping to refute that prophecy, which perhaps no one remembersbut if you actually were to pull, in Nexis whatever the citations were in that era, you wou ld see article after article about AIDS will be untreatable, National Academy of Science forum says AIDS untreatable, don't waste money on treatment, all the different things that

...

think that that's on balance. It may not appear that way in any given y ar, but

(

over time that' s the way it  works.  And  I think that quite frankly that system may  or may not be apparent to outside observers.

...

l                 creating the National Cancer Program. What that did, in part, is help fuel the

(

molecular revolution. One could say it had the molecular revolution that we now know and see every day in astonishing things that have resulted from the idea of recombinant DNA technology.  Is  that  something that  would 've  happened anyway? Probably. But the NCI and the allocation of resources in the context of cancer research fueled that revolution. Fueled many of the applications of recombinant DNA technology, expanded concepts such as oncogenes and suppressor genes and the concept of checkpoint function and cell regulation and DNA repair and all the different  issues that  now  everybody  talks about  on a routine basis.

...

people take a fresh look at things.

(

(

Beyond a certain amount of time, you may find that you're suddenly spending a lot of time defending what you did earlier in your career and proving yourself right as opposed to being open to a real second look.

...

African-Americans versus genera l population.

(

(

We made very strong commitments to training, we defended basic science and the peer review system and especi ally made a very strong effort to announce that we will protect the peer review system from politics.  We tried to develop flexibility and to protect certain types of creative processes so that that part of the Institute was very strong. We tried to develop a sensitivity for investigators whose funding might be on the borderline and who had interesting ideas but who still couldn't convince peer review groups that they were worth taking a chance. So we developed small grants programs and on occasion a flexible program for giving people a chance to establish their pilot results through various mechanisms

...

Yarchoan, Bob, 13

Nelson, Dave, 9

(