Alexander G. Papageorge

Alex was born to Eva and John Papageorge on July 9, 1947 in Little Rock, Arkansas and enjoyed a happy childhood with his parents and three siblings, including his twin brother, Bill.

Alex went on to live an incredible professional life. He was an exceptional individual who performed important fundamental cancer research throughout his 50-year exemplary career at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), which is part of the National Institutes of Health, in Bethesda, Maryland. Alex will be greatly missed by his NCI colleagues. Alex received his undergraduate and graduate education at the University of Arkansas, obtaining his BS in zoology in 1970 and his MS in endocrinology 1972. He began his work at NCI in 1972 and remained active there until a few weeks before his passing, publishing more than 50 original research articles during his career. Most of his time at NCI was devoted to research on the RAS proteins, which are the second most commonly mutated proteins in cancer and are especially frequent in three of the most lethal cancers: pancreatic, colorectal, and lung.

In the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, he was a major author of classic papers that first identified and then characterized the main properties of the protein, and how the mutations enabled RAS to contribute to the development of many cancers. It proved very difficult to develop inhibitors against the RAS protein, but the first drug to successfully target one of the RAS mutations was approved by the FDA in 2021 for the treatment of lung cancer, and other candidate drugs directed at the most common RAS mutation in pancreatic cancer entered clinical trials this year. In addition to Alex’s work at NCI, his special expertise in the biochemistry of the RAS protein enabled to him collaborate with researchers beyond NIH. Alex also displayed considerable detective skills; he used them most famously in the early 1980’s, to uncover convincing evidence that the widely ballyhooed “breakthrough findings” of a graduate student from another institution were actually the result of fabricated research.

Alex dedicated his life to two things: science and his twin brother, Bill, who passed away just hours after Alex. Bill was able to overcome the challenges of cerebral palsy and became a successful scholar – because of the ongoing love and support he received from Alex and the rest of his family.

Alex is survived by his loving sister Maria and brother Tom and predeceased by his parents, Eva and John Papageorge. Both Alex and Bill passed away on November 18.