Cytocentric Visionaries: Hal Broxmeyer

Hal Broxmeyer telling Randy Yerden about his latest findings in June 2016.

The average height of the Cytocentric researcher has been reduced, now that we have lost a giant. Hal Broxmeyer died December 8th , at the age of 77, from complications of thyroid cancer. His influence as a founding father of hematopoietic stem cell therapeutics cannot be overstated. He published over 800 articles, has spoken at countless conferences, and received numerous prestigious awards. His work laid the foundation for modern cord blood transplantation. He made the first cord blood transplant possible, and started the first cord blood bank at Indiana University. Thousands of patients have benefited from treatments that he made possible.
Hal was one the first scientists to cite our equipment in his publications. In an interview with us in 2016, Hal talked about when, back in the 1980s, our founder, Randy Yerden, loaned him a piece of equipment to control oxygen around cells in culture to physiologic levels. Hal went on to use that equipment to clearly show that colony formation of HSCs was improved by physiologic oxygen levels in culture. Of course, since then, he went on to publish many, many more papers on the subject. Hal Broxmeyer was the Cytocentric Visionary that first defined Extraphysiologic Oxygen Shock (EPHOSS). His landmark 2015 paper in Cell brought widespread attention to the damage inflicted on cells from inside the body when they are first exposed to atmospheric oxygen levels.
It didn’t surprise us to find out that Hal was a competitive weight lifter well into his 50s. His efforts to help change the way that cells are treated in vitro could be compared to lifting a great weight. He didn’t shy away from an energetic discussion of the data, and he consistently challenged other scientists to make significant changes in their own labs. His was a difficult and noble task.
Hal also told us in our interview that the most important thing to bring to in vitro experiments was rigor. That’s what we will work to carry forward from him to the rest of the world.