PROFESSOR ERIC BOYLAND: Seventy years ago, speaking at an international cancer meeting in Madrid, Professor Eric (Dick) Boyland, who died on May 31st aged 97, began a process which led to a key discovery in molecular toxicology. He suggested that, as cancer-causing hydrocarbons were chemically inert, but often caused cancer tumours at sites far from their initial contact with the body, they must be converted - within the body - to more active compounds that initiated the process of carcinogenesis.
Dick Boyland was a founding father of world molecular toxicology, and, in pushing the idea that inert chemicals are converted to "reactive intermediates" - which do the cancer damage - he anticipated findings by two decades. He had started work at the research laboratories of the Cancer Hospital (now the Royal Marsden) in October 1931. These laboratories were part of the institute for cancer research in west London. After the Madrid meeting, his group - which moved in 1939 to the nearby Chester Beatty Research Institute in west London - began studying the metabolism of numerous hydrocarbons. He remained at the Chester Beatty Institute until his retirement in 1970.
This early work led to the seminal suggestion that certain specific metabolites were formed via a common intermediate, an arene oxide. The suggestion that arene oxides were key intermediates in hydrocarbon metabolism was made at least 20 years before they were successfully synthesised in 1964 by the Americans M.S. Newman and S. Blum.
The synthesis of arene oxides by Newman and Blum allowed its application to other hydrocarbons. This led to the biological and chemical properties of arene oxides being established. These matched the requirements of a reactive intermediate - and Dick Boyland's prophecy was fulfilled.
Dick Boyland was born in Lime Grove, Manchester, the son of a cloth merchant on an extremely modest income, and educated at Manchester Central High School. He graduated from Manchester College of Technology in applied chemistry, and became a technician at the British Alizarin Company, while studying chemistry, physics and mathematics through evening classes. After two years, a scholarship enabled him to return to the college full time. In his final year, he specialised in physiology and chemistry, graduating with first-class honours in 1926.
That same year he started research at Manchester University medical school. He won the Hill prize for his subsequent MSc, and then joined the Lister Institute, working with Walter Morgan on the chemistry of blood groups. He took a doctorate from London University in 1930, and then spent a year at the Kaiser Wilhelm Medical Institute, in Heidelberg.
It was while there that he met his future wife, the Cambridge University-educated crystallographer, Margaret "Peg" Maurice. They married in 1931, shortly before Dick Boyland joined the Cancer Hospital.
In the early 1950s, it became clear that certain workers in the dyestuff industry developed tumours of the urinary bladder following their exposure to aromatic amines, particularly 2-naphthylamine, benzidine and 4-xenylamine. This was investigated by Dick Boyland and Don Manson. Again, the fact that tumours developed at an anatomical site distant from initial exposure suggested that metabolic conversion took place, and that the urinary-borne active metabolite was transferred to the bladder and released to initiate cancer. This led to the recognition of more than 20 metabolites from a single chemical.
Dick Boyland also realised that cancer of the urinary tract occurred in patients who had not been exposed to industrial amines, and he argued that something must be working from within. It was soon revealed that elevated levels of the metabolites 3-hydroxykynurenine, and 3-hydroxyanthranilic acid were present in the urine of subjects suffering from the condition. These compounds, and some metabolites derived from industrial amines, were shown to be locally carcinogenic when implanted into the bladders of mice.
Another of Dick Boyland's interests was tobacco smoke as a cause of cancer. F.J.C. Roe had already calculated that the concentrations of known carcinogens derived from tobacco were not enough to account for its carcinogenicity. Dick Boyland suggested that "nitrosamines", derived from tobacco alkaloids, might be the causative agents. Unfortunately, the technology allowing their detection in tobacco smoke and biological systems was not available, and it was left to others to confirm his idea.
However, he wrote a monograph on bladder cancer, and published extensively in scientific and medical journals. With Roy Goulding he edited the (unfortunately shortlived) Modern Trends In Toxicology.
His wife died in 1985; he is survived by two sons and a daughter.
Professor Eric (Dick) Boyland: born 1905; died, May 2002