Stanley J. Korsmeyer

Stanley Joel Korsmeyer was an American oncologist. Through his studies of apoptosis, Korsmeyer helped develop the concepts of the role of programmed cell death in carcinogenesis. In 1989 Korsmeyer was among the first to confirm that a particular form of lymphoma arose in certain B cells because they had a genetic flaw that caused them to overexpress a gene, Bcl-2, that was involved in the body's normal process for getting rid of them. He then conducted a number of studies defining the activity of a number of related genes and their role in apoptosis.