http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/10/obituaries/10JACO.html?pagewanted=print
November 10, 2001
Dr. Lawrence D. Jacobs, a neurologist
who helped harness the power of a human protein to fight multiple sclerosis,
died on Nov. 2 at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.
He was 63.
The cause was cancer, his family
said.
Dr. Jacobs was an early explorer
of the theory that interferon, a protein produced by white blood cells
to help fight infection, might be used to help people with multiple sclerosis,
an autoimmune disease that attacks the nerves in the spine and brain.
Although the illness remains incurable,
Dr. Jacobs's work helped lead to the development of one of two interferon-based
drugs that reduce symptoms of the most common form of the disease.
To hear Dr. Jacobs tell it, his decision
to become a multiple sclerosis researcher occurred almost by happenstance.
After earning a medical degree from St. Louis University, he joined the
faculty of the SUNY Buffalo medical school, of which he later became neurology
chairman. He also began consulting at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute,
at which early research was being conducted on the value of interferon
as a cancer drug.
In a 1998 university publication,
Dr. Jacobs said he and his colleagues asked themselves whether the treatment
might also help people with neurological ailments. "We first considered
Lou Gehrig's disease, but ultimately we decided on M.S., because Buffalo
happens to be in a geographic region where M.S. occurs with high frequency
and there were so many patients in Western New York with M.S. It was just
luck."
Lawrence Jacobs was born on July
20, 1938, and grew up near Buffalo.
He is survived by his wife, the former
Pamela Ryan, a member of the State University of New York board; three
sons, Christopher L., Luke T. and Lawrence D. Jr., all of Buffalo; two
daughters, Jessica H. Enstice of Snyder, N.Y., and Elizabeth R. Jacobs
of Buffalo; two brothers, Max, of Captiva Island, Fla., and Jeremy M.,
of East Aurora, N.Y.; two sisters, Michelle Jacobs, of Laguna Beach, Calif.,
and Jennifer Jacobs, of Phoenix; and a granddaughter.
Copyright 2001 The New York Times
Company
By ERIC NAGOURNEY