Professor David York Mason
Professor David York Mason who died on the 2nd February 2008 from post operative complications was an internationally renowned authority on the diagnosis and pathology of human lymphoma and leukaemia. As is clearly evident from the wealth of tributes being sent and posted on the web he had an influence far beyond his own laboratory. His work on techniques and reagents has spread to virtually every hospital in the world. He can truly be said to have changed radically the practice of pathology as it relates to haematological malignancy.
David Mason was born on November 30th 1941 and educated at Tonbridge School, St John’s College University of Oxford and St Thomas' Hospital qualifying in 1966. He came from a medical family but was brought up with a life long passion for the arts. He combined these two enthusiasms at University occasionally veering more to the arts than his tutors would have preferred. This led though to a highly successful and satisfying role in the early development of television satire. Indeed he was a scriptwriter for some of the early pre Monty Python satirical shows especially “That was the week that was” for which he was still delighted to be receiving some royalties right up until his untimely death.
After qualifying in medicine he turned his back on a literary career and concentrated the rest of his life on the study of human lymphomas, a cancerous tumour of the lymph glands and other tissues that presented considerable problems in diagnosis and classification to clinical haematologists. He was one of the first with Clive Taylor to show that antibodies, then studied mainly in test tubes by scientists, could be applied to clinical samples from patients. He immediately realised that the discovery of monoclonal antibodies in 1977 was a great opportunity for this to be developed. In spite of considerable scepticism from many colleagues he persevered with the production of these antibodies specifically developing them for human applications. To enable this he developed and improved many technical methods including the so-called APAAP technique whose description has become a citation classic. Today his reagents and methods are applied daily in the routine practice of pathology worldwide.
He was very enthusiastic about international collaboration. Visitors flocked to his laboratory from around the world to study these new reagents and learn their applications. He rarely turned anyone away if there was space and cared not if they were famous or just starting. An enthusiasm to learn and co-operate was all he desired. Today the leaders in lymphoma pathology and research include many clinicians and scientists who spent periods from weeks to years with him in Oxford. He maintained this welcome to researchers right up to the present time.
He was promoted to Reader (1994) and then in 1997 to Professor of Cellular Pathology at Oxford. The Leukaemia Research Fund was his main source of funding throughout his career and with which he developed a close personal relationship. He founded and was the first director of the Leukaemia Research Fund Immunodiagnostics Unit which has recently been expanded into a National antibody resource for the Charity’s research workers. Within this unit he built up an incredibly loyal and helpful team that stood by him for over 20 years of whom the key players are Jackie Cordell, Margaret Jones, Karen Pulford and Bridget Watson.
He was a founding member in 1991 of the International Lymphoma Study Group that brought together pathologists and clinicians from around the world to discuss and agree on lymphoma diagnosis and research. At that time there was a great divide between the United States and Europe with many rival and highly complex classification schemes. David alongside Peter Isaacson, Harald Stein, Elaine Jaffe, Nancy Harris and several others brought all of these disparate opinions together and formulated a new clear highly practical scheme for clinical use. Today this is encapsulated as the WHO Classification of lymphomas and leukaemias. A tribute to the enormity of this achievement comes from the fact that present day diagnostic pathologists utilising this scheme wonder what the arguments can have been about. Another measure of his success is that over nearly 30 years he was regularly the top cited scientist in Oxford and always in the leader table of UK scientists.
Until the present day David has continued to investigate avenues to improve classification and diagnosis with new reagents and techniques. A recent promising approach has been the development of methods of highlighting underlying genetic lesions directly on a patient’s lymphoma samples. Latterly he has achieved this in a very successful collaboration with his present wife Teresa Marafioti who is an experienced haematopathologist in her own right.
David was involved with the HLDA Workshops from the very beginning, participating in the Paris Workshop. He was among the Editors of Leukocyte Typing 3 and 6 and Chaired the 7th Workshop and Conference. He continued to play a leading role on Council, and was an agent of change in recent years, fostering the broadening of the aims of the Workshops that are reflected in the name HCDM. His contributions to Council were always rational, relevant and witty. HCDM will miss David greatly.
